Updated: Feb 12, 2021
With video being a core marketing asset, the ability to add an interactive overlay maximises its potential. The rise of social media has shifted consumer behaviour towards immediacy and easy access to more information. Video interactivity is the perfect way of responding to this change by giving access to more information about anything in a video through a single click.
Adding an interactive overlay also gives access to additional analytics about each interaction with content. This provides a way to understand how customers engage with videos, what they are actually interested in, and which parts of your videos worked best on different channels.
Interactive video technologies add clickable overlays to videos. The overlays can be used in a wide range of use cases, from showcasing additional information for discovery purposes, to enabling direct in-video shopping.
Here are a few examples of how businesses are adding video interactivity to help drive engagement and sales online:
INTERACTIVE TRAVEL VIDEOS - LEARN MORE
Travel related videos often showcase beautiful and inspirational locations, hotels, and activities. However, actually finding out what has been featured can be very difficult and require a lot of searching. Using interactive video technology to tag videos, can transform these videos into fun discovery experiences where the viewer can click on anything they find interesting to instantly see more details with links to relevant web pages.
Video: Interactive discovery video example from Amazing Thailand
INTERACTIVE CAR ADVERTS - BOOK A TEST DRIVE
Every new car launch campaign includes a video highlighting certain new features of the vehicle. Using interactive technology to make these features clickable can add huge value to the content experience as the viewer can instantly read more details about each feature with relevant links and ability to download a brochure or to book a test drive for example. The video interaction also creates a seamless link from the inspirational video to the final call to action, helping car brands increase their conversion.
There are also examples of interactivity that can create an additional immersive experience such as the Honda campaign where the user was able to switch between day and night during video playback.
Video: Interactive video campaign from BMW on Instagram and Facebook
VIDEO ECOMMERCE & VIDEO SHOPPING - SHOP NOW
An increasingly popular use case for interactive video is to enable video shopping and livestream shopping. Interactivity can be used to make products in videos instantly shoppable, with in-video check out capabilities. This allows brands to convert videos from assets that were traditionally only used for awareness purposes, into a format that gets customers into the purchase funnel and enables direct conversion. Shoppable video format works across a wide range of categories from fashion to beauty, luxury to electronics and home.
Video: JD Sports shoppable video
The possibilities of using interactive video platforms to tag videos and create interactive experiences can be endless!
Make your first interactive video here
- Dec 22, 2020
Updated: May 24, 2021
Discover Smartzer's top highlights of the year.
As we say goodbye to 2020, here are some of the top highlights that we have managed to accomplish this year. Special thanks to all of the team and our customers who have gone the extra mile and worked hard together during a particularly challenging time for all!
Smartzer New Product Features
We launched 4 new product features that extend Smartzer’s technology to reach more users and in even more media formats:
Shoppable images - We no longer only work with videos, now you can also transform images into shoppable and interactive experiences online.
Smartzer MINI shop links - Use Smartzer MINI shop links on your favourite social media platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok.
Google Ads Integration - Amplify your data set by connecting the Smartzer player to your Google Ad account.
Shoppable Livestreams - Make your Livestreams shoppable and interactive.
Best-in-class Interactive Videos
Here are our Top 5 interactive and shoppable videos of 2020. Some notable projects also include Paco Rabanne, MINI, JD Sports, Brown Thomas & Arnotts, MAN Truck & Bus, to name a few.
Events
We contributed to some great digital events involving fashion, innovation, and technology, including:
London’s Fashion week with the British Fashion Council.
AI Luxury and Creativity hosted by Startup Inside group.
The Catalysts Podcast - a podcast that focuses on the key benefits of corporates and startups working together
co:cubed SixSixty/Retail Week - Digital Collaborators
Other highlights of our year were:
Find out how top marketers are repurposing old content to maximise ROI.
Using Smartzer technology to transform your store into an online shoppable experience.
Once again a special thanks to everyone who has helped make 2020 a year not to completely forget and who has kept strong when faced with such adversity. Bring on 2021!
Updated: Feb 12, 2021
In early December 2020, Startup Inside group, a leading ecosystem of experts in Open innovation in France hosted, AI for Luxury and Creativity. Alongside Karoline Gross (Smartzer Founder & CEO), speakers included Ian Rogers (Chief Digital Officer of LVMH), Tatiana Dupond (Head of Luxury at Linkedin), Luc Julia (CTO and Senior VP of Innovation at Samsung), and Stephane Spinella (Director of Retail and CPG at Google Cloud), each discussing the role of artificial intelligence in the luxury and creative sectors today and developments in this area in the future.
Smartzer’s founder Karoline Gross had the opportunity to talk about Smartzer’s plans when it comes to using AI in our product offering and sharing more about the way we use data currently.
‘A huge part of making data useful is to turn it into something actionable’ said Karoline Gross, while talking about how Smartzer obtains large amounts of user interaction data from the interactive and shoppable videos, and how this data is processed and converted into useful and focused insights. This is split into the ability to understand key performance metrics as well as using the data to make creative decisions to adapt the user experience to the interactive overlay as well as the video content itself to drive increased interaction.
To create experiences that are personalized for each brand is highly important when working with luxury brands. A lot of the creative decisions for designing an interactive experience are supported by interaction data. As we build a larger database of interaction data combined with the user experience of the interactive videos, there is future potential to use AI to automate the process of personalising the video viewing experience for each customer based on how they interact with content online.
Bringing AI into creativity is a growing trend in the luxury sector. According to Ian Rogers, one of their main goals is to combine technology with creativity: ‘The strategy of adding operational efficiency to creativity’.
AI is playing an important role in all industries Rogers explained as he challenged Damien Gromier, CEO of Startup Inside and host of the conference, to live a day without using AI, naming some everyday tools like Google maps, which already use AI in some way in their platforms. It’s no longer a talk about the future, it’s now.
Luxury brands are all about exclusivity and privacy. These days, customers trust their favourite brands with a whole wealth of personal information, however, customers share that information with the confidence that their data is private and protected. When it comes to personalisation, it’s also vital for brands to adhere to agreed privacy policies and use their customer's information with respect. Therefore it’s important for brands to use data and AI in a customer-first mindset. With this approach, the brands themselves can become more intelligent, while also adding value to the customer throughout their consumer journey.
‘Creativity should lead the way and AI should be there to support it’ said Rogers while talking about what’s the future for AI and creative businesses, a combination of human creativity and AI to make more intelligent choices, improve the business and add value to the customer’s experience.
As we move forward we will be able to see AI involved in more and more aspects of our lives, and we are excited about the future opportunities to apply this to the work we do at Smartzer.
See the full session here: https://www.aiforluxury.paris/session/3e7dcef1-2a2f-eb11-9fb4-0003ff1d3cc2
Special thanks for Start-Up Inside for having us! Find out more about some of the amazing work they do supporting start-ups around the world here: https://www.startupinside.com/