Personalized video, also called dynamic video, has been making waves for some time. It’s a development that’s exciting for everyone, from marketers, to developers, and even to audiences. It’s exciting enough that it deserves an introduction. Reader, meet personalized video.
What Is Personalized Video And How Does It Compare To Regular Video?
With regular video, nothing can change after the video has been exported – it’ll always do the same thing. On the other hand, personalized video can respond to programming commands. With just a few lines of code, you can change text, images and audio, skip and reorder sections, and much more. These changes can even happen as you’re watching the video. You could make a “choose your own adventure” video if you wanted to!
This means, among other things, that you can:
- Use viewers’ real names in a video, either using an input screen or by grabbing their data from a backend (like SalesForce, for example).
- Load data (like interest or tax rates from a file) so your video is always up to date.
- Draw dynamic graphs based on whatever data you want.
- Play different footage depending on the user’s location, device type, and more.
- Get detailed video viewing analytics with tracking software.
- Play video without having to store a video file.
- Make videos as dynamic as interactive tools that work seamlessly on mobile.
Personalized videos aren’t any larger than regular videos – in fact, they’re often smaller in file size. They can be programmed just like regular interactive websites and don’t require any special licensing or proprietary technology. They’re also mobile-friendly and viewable on all devices. Think of them as the next step in video technology or the next step in interactive tool technology.
What Can Personalized Video Be Used For?
Personalized video is a relatively new technology whose many uses and benefits are only beginning to be discovered. While this may seem daunting, all these uses share the same basic principle: combining the interactivity of tools and quizzes with the shareability and educational ability of video. Unsurprisingly, personalized video has already begun to shine in a number of content types.
Custom Explainers
Have a lot of things to say and don’t want to bog your viewers down with unnecessary details? With personalized video, you can make a video that contains only the portions you want to show – or that a user wants to see. Say you make a personalized video to tell the viewer what they need to know about investing. Have them fill out a small questionnaire to customize their video: if they don’t plan on having children, skip the section on RESPs!
Personalized Product Promos
Personalized video lets you tailor promotional video to viewers’ preferences so that they only see promos for products they may be interested in. You can even show them the best fits first, to make sure you grab their attention before it drifts.
Personalized Case Studies – Calculator Explainers
You’ve heard the “Let’s say you invest $1,000…” hypothetical before. With personalized video, this hypothetical is a thing of the past: you can use real data and watch it dance. A viewer can type in how much they’re planning to save over a certain period of time and see how those very real values apply to, say, a particular bank account. You can even take it a step further by pairing video explainers with a calculator or questionnaire and offering explanations for a user’s actual results through video, with no need for the now-obsolete hypothetical. Your video explainers can do even more when they include the user’s inputs, data feeds, and other helpful external information.
Evergreen Ads
Personalized video works great on digital ad platforms too! If you want to promote a product but don’t want to create a whole new updated video each time the price changes, or if you want to tailor one video to multiple markets or demographics, one personalized video can do the work of countless static videos.
Onboarding And Training
If you offer onboarding and training materials through video, a single dynamic video can let you easily customize your content so every user gets only the parts of the training they require. This means you’ll only need to maintain one “master” training video, to which you can add or remove pieces however you like.
These are just the tip of the personalized video iceberg. Many of its uses and benefits are still being discovered and developed – you could even be sitting on the next big personalized video idea right now! As personalized video super fans, we at Rich Media have the experience and the know-how to help bring your vision to life.
