Video Analytics 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Data-Driven Content Creation
Video is expected to account for 82% of video traffic by 2025, which means it should be an integral part of any business’s marketing strategy. From promo and explainer videos to interviews and live events, there are countless ways you can produce video content — but that doesn’t mean you should do so without direction. To make your video content strategy as effective as possible, you need intelligent video analytics.
Intelligent video analytics track a variety of metrics, including those related to Quality of Service (e.g., your stream’s technical health) and Quality of Engagement (e.g., how much your audience is interacting with your videos). These insights empower you to make data-informed decisions when planning and executing your overall strategy. For example, if you notice that your system is experiencing outages, your analytics platform can tell you the source of the problem so you can fix it before it affects your viewers’ experience. If you see viewers like and comment more on one kind of video than another, you know what type of content you should produce more of.
This blog post will focus on the latter metric: Quality of Engagement. Your video solution undoubtedly has intelligent video analytics, but how do you leverage the information it provides to shape your content strategy? How do you transform engagement and revenue data into something actionable? Here are a few ways to use quality of engagement analytics to make your video marketing more effective.
Table of Contents
Improve Audience Understanding
As we mentioned above, deepening how well you understand your audience is one of the most significant benefits of intelligent video analytics. Whatever platform you use should be able to tell you basic information including demographics, geographic locations, devices watched on, and viewing habits. The more you know about your audience, the more you can cater your content to them. Viewers in the United States may have different interests than viewers in China, so if you have more viewers in one place than the other, you can choose to adjust your content to their expectations more.
It’s likely you have a target audience that you’re trying to reach. While intelligent video analytics can inform you who your target audience should be — and it may surprise you — it can also tell you how effectively you’re reaching who you intend to. If your target audience includes Americans ages 18-30, then metrics like engagement and total watch time (compared to viewers who watch a couple seconds of a video and leave) amongst that demographic can tell you if your content is hitting its mark.
Optimize Content
On a related note, intelligent video analytics are advantageous for optimizing the kind of content you produce. Are you putting out engaging material? Is it striking a chord with audiences, motivating them to watch the entire way through, click, comment, and interact? If your goal is to make sales, is your content pushing consumers down the customer funnel effectively?
Pay attention to metrics like watch time and drop-off points. This way, you’ll know where you lose people and can identify the common denominator you need to fix.
Learn everything you need to know about what metrics to pay attention to and how Wowza offers insights you won't find anywhere else.
Personalization
You can also leverage data-driven insights from intelligent video analytics to personalize your video content for different audience segments. Even if you have a target audience, odds are they’re not a monolith, so you can learn what nuances between demographics you need to account for when creating content. Analytics can help you implement personalized recommendations and calls to action based on viewer behavior and preferences to drive more targeted engagement.
A/B Testing
A/B testing can be an effective way to determine what kind of content performs best, but it’s best done alongside video analytics than trying to measure everything yourself. For example, if you put out two videos with different elements and can clearly tell one performed better, how do you identify why? Intelligent video analytics give you insight into drop-off points on the other video or the highest number of replays on the popular one so you can pinpoint what exactly you should repeat in the future.
Optimizing Distribution Channels
Creating compelling content is only one part of the process — putting somewhere where people will see it is just as important. Intelligent video analytics are beneficial for determining which distribution channels are ideal for your content and target audience. Are you able to reach them best on Instagram? YouTube? Or maybe even your own branded VOD channel? Analytics can tell you which platforms yield the highest engagement and conversion rates so you can maximize your reach and impact.
Campaign Performance Evaluation
Of course, video analytics can measure the impact of your overall video marketing strategy and campaign performance. It’s wise to analyze data to understand how videos contribute to key performance indications including lead generation, sales, and brand awareness.
Predictive Analysis
Intelligent video analytics are often capable of something else that’s incredibly useful: predictive analytics. Understanding how your content is performing in the present is one thing but predicting trends (based on current consumer behavior and historical engagement data) can help you stay ahead of the game and create content that distinguishes itself from your competitors. Proactively adapting your marketing strategy is an invaluable opportunity for establishing brand authority and maximizing engagement.
Video analytics are an essential component of any video marketing strategy — and platform. Wowza’s robust analytics dashboard grants you insight into a variety of insightful metrics that empower you to optimize your strategy and unlock the power of video. Check out this post for everything you need to know about intelligent video analytics or get in touch with us to find out more.