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2009 is going to be the year online video explodes and this article will help you understand the trends and the opportunities for your business to use video to drive conversion and raise your brand profile.

Background – of online video usage
Last year, over 66% of internet kiwis were actively watching online video according to Nielsen Net-ratings, the online measurement research company. Worldwide the picture is similar with Comcast, another leading online measurement company reporting that in 2008, in key markets such as the UK, Germany and the USA, the average person watched over 100 videos per month online.

Digging deeper the usage of video is not just music and home videos on youtube.com. Crucially video growth is coming from how to sites like expertvillage.com, media content sites driving news and sport, and – crucially - businesses promoting themselves and their products.

Significant numbers of reports and research are available showing the online video growth in the small business sector is seen as one of the key drivers in online advertising. For snapshot summaries of these reports from the like of forrester.com, emarketeer.com, Kelsey.com you can visit the VideoRevo blog at   silverlinemedia.tv.wordpress.com

What is online video advertising?
Through an online video playing on your homepage of your web site you can significantly increase conversions through re-enforcing the message and proposition. Words and motion have been the driving advertising medium for corporate and small business alike. With the power of online video production and delivery you can compete with the majors and make your business stand out. TV advertising has always been recommended by advertising agency professionals due to its ability to cut through and build confidence. Historically this was arguably expensive in both production and air-time spend, but the internet is breaking the rules of the model, again.

Imagine the ability to present your business proposition in a snappy professional video. Motion and sound has been the most compelling advertising form since its exception. In many cases you are the selling point of the business delivering the passion and benefits of your proposition. The visitors to your web site will be impressed and the video will help build trust and confidence in you. Most of the visitors to your web site do not know who you are. You’ve reviewed your web site logs and you will have probably found that the visitor does not stay long or actually look at that many pages. Video helps overcome this, raising both time spend and, crucially, conversions.

Online Video Made Easy
You can of course, create your own video; upload it to youtube.com or one of the multitudes of online video web sites. Copy the embed code and paste into your web site and let YouTube power the video on your web site. The weaknesses of this model are quality of the video production, the playback quality and the link back to YouTube, meaning those visitors to your web site you have worked hard to get can move on to YouTube.