People are accessing, consuming and sharing content in more varied ways than ever, and marketers have scores of new opportunities to understand, reach, and engage with consumers. But at the same time the ecosystem of technologies that supports online advertising has become so complicated and cumbersome that it actually makes it harder for advertisers to invest more money to market effectively, putting the industry’s growth at risk. Technology will only be able to deliver new alternatives if it creates greater process efficiencies, drives more profit, and enables deeper engagement with consumers. We are confident that these big shifts in the industry will result in relationships between brands and consumers that are more transparent and based on the exchange of real value. There has been a consumer revolution led by digital paradigm shift. However, the advertising industry has not yet been disrupted as much as needed.
Nowadays, online advertising is intrusive, boring and even bothering. According to IAB Spain and Zenith Optimedia, almost 92% of people abandon Pre-Roll ads with the option Skip-Ad, when this option is not shown, 15% of people close the entire video to avoid the ad. In-Video Ads do not work better, 15% of viewers close the image shown at bottom, and barely 3% click on that kind of ad.
In order to overcome these problems we have tested in a relevant environment a new interactive video format that increases user engagement. When users enjoy a PlayFilm interactive video they watch an audiovisual piece with hotspots that invite them to play. Anytime users choose to play, they voluntarily interrupt content and start interacting with a branded game that allows them to unlock relevant and exclusive extra contents or win interesting prizes. By means of this innovative format, marketing agencies get more and better impacts in a less intrusive way.
Now it is the best moment for interactive video, there are interactive screens available to everyone and online video consumption is growing exponentially, however, producing interactive video contents is still expensive and barely unprofitable, thus increasing the total production costs up to a 50%.
This new concept will revolutionize the advertising industry, since it turns the user into an active and key part of storytelling, thus being able to build a new creative and valuable layer around brands.
The purpose of this innovation project is to fast prototype and demonstrate a new tool and interactivity market ecosystem to create fully advanced interactive experiences in a cost-effective and profitable way. This tool will be named PFMaker and will reduce the time of production of an interactive video by 67% and its development costs by up to 81%. This tool will allow the quick creation of interactive videos with advanced user interactions such as 3D Graphics and Augmented Reality playing.
The feasibility study was divided in three different lines:
- To validate the market: We have setted up interviews with main stakeholder to collect their needs focusing on video advertising.
- To validate the user needs. We have carried out two user studies. The first one focused on interactive video consumers and the second one on video creators.
- IPR protection: We have carried out an IPR study in order to ensure we can operate with our technology in our target markets.
