Gustaf Stenlund
Gustaf Stenlund
March 7, 2018

 
We’re excited to share a sneak peek of our latest feature, our video + social integrations!
 

 
Today, we’re talking to none other than Ben Young, CEO & Founder of Nudge, about what we’ve built and what this means for our partners.
 
Interview summary:

 
You can watch the full interview, or read the transcript below.


 
Request a demo and we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about Nudge.
 
Q: What have we built and why are we announcing it now?
 
The branded content landscape has changed a lot in the last three months, the last year, the last two years and social and the open web are entangled; they go hand in hand, which is the challenge for brands and publishers to figure out where how and what is the right mix.
 
That’s why we’re announcing our video + social integrations because this helps you understand that mix.
 
Q: Why is this important specifically for Nudge? Others provide video metrics.
 

Video is a really interesting landscape. There are lots of solutions if you’re a vlogger, there are solutions if you embed video, but if you’re a modern video marketer your video often ends up in different places and various formats.

We had a recent client and they had three open web video formats; a YouTube video, a Facebook video and an Instagram video – so it’s still a video (the core idea is still there), but each of those environments are different and the reasons why people watch and how they discover the videos are different. What that also means is the value that the brand gets [from each environment] is different.
 
We’ve seen a lot of point solutions in the marketplace (this is the reason why Nudge looks at any new product; we went – look, this is a challenge for brands to identify value so let’s help them do that), we’ve brought the first aggregate video solution that lets you unify all of the videos into one place and then gives you metrics so you can compare where you’re getting value.
 
Q: What have we learned from rolling out these new features?
 
The thing that really has surprised me, and continuous to surprise me, is how many different ways that video is served to consumers; when I think I understand at all, there’s a new way that it’s being served. If I’m spending all my time looking at that, and I get a view of how all the brands and publishers are serving it (sitting across that buy side and sales side), you can see why it’s been such a problem in the past, to figure out what value you are getting.
 
From out initial results, the differences between open web environments and YouTube environments and YouTube & Facebook, there’s quite a lot of difference between what videos work where and why.
 
Another thing that’s really surprised me, which might not surprise others, is just how well YouTube works. One of the initial findings we’ve found is that YouTube has really nice high attention but maybe has not the same reach as Facebook. It’s a balancing act for brands, around ‘can I get more reach, but less penetration on each video’. That’s one of the benefits of when you unify the data.
 

The other learning is, when you put all these data-points side by side, it makes it all a lot easier to figure out and make these optimizations on the fly.


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Q: What does this mean to the Nudge experience, what’s happening now for the end-user?
 
It’s been really good. Because we’ve sought to aggregate and unify between say article and video content, it helps you understand what is resonating with your audiences where and what kind of value you’re getting from it. It is a genuine question, should I invest in written content or video content, so we can start to surface some of those answers and I really like that.
 
As a marketer, myself, I’m always looking at ‘what’s changed and how do I need to change with it. This just helps keep us all on our toes.
 
Q: How does it work, how long does it take to set up?
 
It sits inside the existing Nudge infrastructure. You login to Nudge, create your campaign, put in a title or line-item, put in flight dates (when does it start/finish), and add a few extra data-points around what you’re optimizing towards.
 
Once you’ve created your campaign, you go into the video section – if it’s a social video, you just need to add the Nudge app to your social accounts, or pass a link to your partner (if you’re working with a partner to create the content – they can then activate and hook-up the data connection), if it’s tracking through open web you can generate pixels for DFP inside Nudge, and there are a few other implementations and plugins in there.
 
Q: What do you get access to specifically?
 
Once you’re inside your Nudge campaign, there’s a new tab called ‘video’ – within that you’re going to see an aggregate view of how all of your videos have performed, showing you where they’re playing, how many plays you’ve had, the average attention minutes for each video, the completion rate and also sentiment; we use AI to analyze all the comments/reactions around a video, this lets us understand if it’s a positive/negative/neutral response from consumers.
 
Q: What video & social platforms do you support?
 
Today; we’ve got Facebook and Youtube. Coming very shortly are Instagram and Twitter.
 
Q: How does the Nudge data enhance what the social networks offer?
 
The walled gardens are called walled gardens for a reason. What we’ve done is we’ve gone, what data can we access and what else can we build on top of, enhance and enrich?
 

The first thing is, by being the connector between all of them, we create the unification, so at least you can compare all of them on a level playing field. We also then let you compare that against all the rest of the branded content that you’re creating and serving through the attention minutes. We’ve also layered in sentiment, so we’ve started to look at the social responses to go, how can we make this more actionable, are consumers reacting positively or negatively towards the videos?

The other thing benchmarking. Because we’re an independent company, and we sit across a fair chunk of the industry, that lets us build benchmarks that are independent, but also branded content focused.
 
These are just some of the benefits that we get. As we look forward, we will start layering on more analysis on top of the analysis we’re doing today.
 
Watch this space!

 
Nudge video + social integrations allow marketers to make apple to apple comparisons between video formats. Book a demo to learn more.
 

 


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