by Basho Mosko | Feb 19, 2014 | Project Examples
Earlier this month, Rapt Media CEO Erika Trautman sat down with ClickZ, a website that covers interactive marketing news, to talk about the state of Interactive Video (IV) and how Rapt Media’s platform is changing online marketing. Along with the full article, which is definitely worth a read, ClickZ also posted a video of Trautman’s answers to questions such as the inspiration behind Rapt Media, what we’ve seen from in the IV space so far, how IV is evolving, what kind of results we’re seeing, and how mobile fits into all of this.
The original video posted by ClickZ was a 7-minute-long linear video that went through all of Trautman’s answers. However, since the story is all about interactive video, we decided to take ClickZ’s video and transform it into an IV.
In about 15 minutes, we imported the original video content into the Rapt Media authoring platform, trimmed the 7-minute clip into five distinct sections, and transformed it into a user-driven Interactive Video. We call that the #InteractiveEffect.
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by Jen Bergen | Feb 10, 2014 | Company News
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that our patent-pending Site Pairing technology is officially out of beta and into the hands of creatives, marketers, brands, and agencies. Our new Site Pairing technology, which creates a link between your video and your website, allows your creative or content team to quickly and easily build a scalable Interactive Video (IV) framework that enables communication between your videos and your website.
“Online Videos have traditionally been dead ends to brands and marketers,” said Erika Trautman, CEO and co-founder of Rapt Media. “Viewers can’t navigate from them, and often leave a site altogether if the content isn’t exactly what they’re looking for.”
Site Pairing technology integrates Rapt Media’s Interactive Video player with the customer’s website to facilitate a two-way conversation between the player and the host-site. When a viewer now clicks on a Rapt Media video with Site Pairing, the website around the frame responds; and when a user clicks on the website, the video responds.
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by Erika Trautman | Feb 7, 2014 | In the Media
This article was originally published by Huffington Post on February 7, 2014.
Thirty years ago, Apple released its iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial. It aired only once during the Super Bowl, yet it’s considered one of the most memorable and successful commercials to date. And while Super Bowl commercials, which are often the highlight of the game to non-football-watching fans, have certainly changed a great deal over the past 30 years — higher-definition footage, greater costs, more puppies, less clothing — there’s still a lot of things that haven’t changed.
Whether aware of it at the time, Apple’s 1984 spot planted the “Think Different” seed into the minds of all who watched it. Although that slogan wouldn’t actually appear for another 13 years, Apple’s goal was to spark revolutions in tech. Though Apple, among other tech giants, have accomplished this over the last three decades with amazing strides in personal electronics, it seems like the TV ads for these products have remained fairly unchanged in terms of technological innovations.
Isn’t it about time that advertisers think differently about the way they create Super Bowl commercials? We certainly think so, and we believe at the exponential rate tech is growing, Super Bowl commercials will look a lot different in 10 years — nay, even next year’s game will see changes to advertising — specifically in the way of interactivity.
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by Jen Bergen | Feb 7, 2014 | In the Media
In an article published to by ClickZ.com yesterday, author Liva Judic speaks with Rapt Media CEO Erika Trautman about why video targeting is not enough for advertising, and how building interactivity into ads is the solution.
Trautman explains in a video accompanying the article that smart brands and marketers know they need to create video content since it’s the No. 1 way that people are getting information about brands and products, and that with the rise in tablets and smartphones, brands and marketers need to meet viewers where they are most, which is in a much more interactive and lean-forward medium. Doing this provides an added value to their customers.
“[Brands and marketers are] making the video experience more relevant, richer, more useful to those customers, and the result is those are higher value viewers,” Trautman says in the video.”Those are people who are much more likely to become customers, much more likely to become sales qualified leads, and much more likely to actually affect the bottom line.”
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by Erika Trautman | Feb 4, 2014 | In the Media, Mobile and HTML5
This article was originally published by Entrepreneur.com on February 4, 2014.
Companies whose products many of us use daily – Dropbox, Twitter, and, of course, Facebook – all sprouted from tiny startup seedlings. And while these all serve as great success stories, the truth is that most startups won’t see this level of achievement. It’s no secret that for every Instagram, there are hundreds of other apps that fail simply due to oversaturation. And yet that fact hasn’t slowed the startup buzz machine.
But the promise of the next big startup win may be losing some of its luster, leaving both investors and brands to look beyond the glam and glitter, instead focusing on business fundamentals and results.
David Berkowitz, CMO of marketing agency MRY and AdAge contributing writer, postulates in his article, “Why Brands Will Focus Less on Startups in 2014,” that lack of results, along with clutter and PR, is the reason why startups’ relationships with brands and agencies will fade like a tired high school fling this year. And I couldn’t agree more. In 2014, brands are looking for results, not hype.
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by Jen Bergen | Jan 30, 2014 | Company News
In yesterday’s announcement about Rapt Media once again powering the interactivity for Cinemax’s “Welcome to Banshee” video microsite, we also mentioned an exciting limited-time promotion to help brands and agencies kickstart their Interactive Video projects.
In order to provide an opportunity for companies to experience, first hand, what the #InteractiveEffect can do for their businesses, all new Rapt Media clients will receive a two-day, on-site consultation with a Rapt Media IV expert to assist with creative and technical implementation. Yes, “on-site” means we’ll come to you and spend two full days with you and your company.
What will we do with you for two days? Lunch? Probably. We like food. But the focus will be identifying a strategy and KPIs for a Rapt Media project and then providing the guidance and support needed to implement, monitor, and optimize that project. This could include any or all of: an overview of the platform, IV best practices, creative strategy, mobile optimization, technical integration, scalability, analytics, storytelling, or distribution.
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by Jen Bergen | Jan 29, 2014 | Company News, In the Media, Mobile and HTML5
If you didn’t get enough of Cinemax’s original action series “Banshee” last year, you’re in for a treat. We’re thrilled to announce that Rapt Media is once again powering the interactivity for Cinemax’s “Welcome to Banshee” video microsite for the show’s second season.
Using Rapt Media’s Interactive Video Solution Suite to support the revamped digital microsite, Cinemax delivers viewers an unprecedented and immersive dive into more than 74 background “Banshee” clips that amplify the season’s story. Each viewer will drive their own interactive experience of the content by following characters, storylines, and symbols, to piece together a unique narrative.
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by Jen Bergen | Jan 24, 2014 | How-Tos and Tips
“Blu-ray,” “cloud storage,” and “convertible PCs.” These terms were thrown around left and right when these tech innovations hit the market. However, not everyone knew exactly what these products were or why they mattered. We all had an inkling of an idea about what they did: Blu-ray was some sort of DVD replacement, cloud storage held your files somewhere in the ether, and convertible PCs somehow combined a laptop and a tablet into one device…we think. Clearly, there was some confusion. As we dive head first into 2014, a certain tech innovation is next up to bat at the Misunderstood Plate: Interactive Video.
We’re sure you’ve been hearing the term “Interactive Video” more and more as of late with videos like Pharrell’s “24 Hours of Happy,” and the interactive music video for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” making waves, but as the company behind the fastest and easiest way to create Interactive Video, we feel it our duty at Rapt Media to lay everything out on the table and explain what an Interactive Video actually is and why the technology has everyone talking. So, let’s start with the basics.
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by Jen Bergen | Jan 16, 2014 | How-Tos and Tips
As a company with our ear to the online-video ground, we can say with conviction that video will have a huge impact on one thing this year: Content Marketing. In a blog post recently published by The Guardian on its Small Business Network, author Chris Trimble speaks to content marketers about why online video is the future of marketing, and why small businesses that don’t integrate it in their marketing strategies are jeopardizing their success.
According to the story, a Cisco study says 69 percent of all consumer Internet traffic will come from video within the next three years, and video-on-demand traffic will nearly triple what it is now. With all of this traffic coming from online video, it’s imperative that companies – both small and large – take advantage of the medium. According to a Nielsen report, 64 percent of marketers believe video content will dominate their strategies going forward. That leaves 36 percent of marketers behind in the dust.
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by Jen Bergen | Jan 6, 2014 | In the Media
Static online video doesn’t harness the nature and power of the Internet. In a recent article published by AdExchanger, a trade publication focused on data-driven digital marketing and programmatic media, author David Kaplan talks with Rapt Media CEO Erika Trautman about how “placing online video’s value in ‘sight, sound and motion’ overlooks the true power of new media,” and how Interactive Video is changing that.
“Interactivity is not just living within the video, but tying it to the rest of the Web,” Trautman said in the article. “Most videos are just dead ends that sit in a player, display unit, or on a site. But we want to seamlessly integrate with all parts of the Web.”
To find out more about what Rapt Media’s doing to make the online video space more interactive, check out the full story on AdExchanger.com.
