The influential power of video is growing as more consumers turn to the medium to help fuel and finalise buying decisions. Awin’s, technology partner Pixmoto is taking an innovative approach to expand video advertising in the affiliate world, recently signing up The Hut Group to its growing list of customers.
Awin’s Head of Strategic Partnerships, Paul Stewart, sat down with Simon Knapp, Co-Founder and CEO of Pixmoto, to dive deeper into the Pixmoto proposition.
Paul: Thanks for joining us, Simon. To kick things off can you give us a short intro to Pixmoto and what the company does?
Simon: Hi Paul, thanks for having me here. Sure, Pixmoto is a video advertising and commerce platform that gives brands total control over where and when their products are featured , as well as connecting viewers directly to the retailers where they can buy these products.
The problem with traditional video advertising is that it has little or no connection to the video being played. Pixmoto changes that up completely. Ads are displayed in context, at key times and viewers are offered an immediate opportunity to buy.
Paul: I think that’s a really important point about giving brands control over how they are featured. This is definitely something that is lacking from traditional video platforms and a deterrent for many brands. Can you tell me what was it that drove you to start Pixmoto?
Simon: Two things really. The first was the explosion of digital video, especially in beauty and food. It was obvious that recipe videos and beauty tutorial videos were designed to promote specific products. The problem was that there was no easy way for users to buy those products directly from the video.
Pixmoto solved this by creating ‘digital billboards’, so products featured in a video can be advertised in context and connected to multiple retailers.
The second was the rise of ad blockers. I saw this as a response to user frustration with the irrelevant pre-roll ads that litter the digital landscape today. It was only a matter of time before the pre-roll advertising model fell apart and publishers would be looking for a better alternative and a better user experience.
Okay, three things … I also thought that the absence of a video player that focussed on affiliate revenue was a huge opportunity in the market.
Paul: Video is a hugely exciting area with fantastic potential. As someone experienced in the space, what are the main changes you've seen in this sector over the last five years?
Simon: I think the last five years have seen a massive explosion of video across every facet of the retail and publishing landscape. In every category, from beauty tutorials to food recipes to home improvement videos showing us how to build a fence, video is a vital part of advertisers’ and publishers’ marketing arsenal.
Slowly but surely, video is replacing the image as the best way to inspire the user to make a purchase. Today you’ll even see video on product landing pages, which used to be solely image-based. When the world’s largest retailer uses a manufacturer’s original video on a product landing page you realise how important video is for helping consumers make purchasing decisions.
Unfortunately, what hasn’t changed is the way publishers are monetising video assets. Our goal is to work with Awin to change this by showing advertisers and publishers that there is a better way to generate advertising and affiliate revenue using original and sponsored video content.
Paul: That’s right, one of the more common issues Awin sees is clients struggling to turn video consumption into ecommerce. Why do you think this process can be so difficult?
Simon: We all know that video is the best way to build brand and product awareness. The statistics show that 64% of people buy something after watching a product-based video and it’s no coincidence that Amazon has videos on almost every product landing page.
For Pixmoto, the critical factor for success comes down to understanding the user experience. We see a lot of retailers using YouTube in their online stores and blogs. Of course, YouTube is free but their model relies on the user watching more videos. Just like other social channels, once you’re on the platform, they don’t want you to leave.
Not only does the retailer lose the user down the YouTube rabbit hole, even when they have the user’s attention, but the ads being served are also typically irrelevant and often annoying.
Instead, Pixmoto believes the best ads to serve are those that fit the context of the video. If a user is watching a recipe video, the best ads to serve that user might be the individual ingredients, cookware, a recipe book or even a bottle of wine.
Pixmoto also believe that once you have the user’s attention, you need to make it easy for them to fulfil their desire for those products. All Pixmoto ads are commerce-connected and users are one click away from starting a transaction with retailers.
Paul: You mentioned recipe videos which, given their increasing popularity, look like a good fit for monetising video. Are there any other retailers or publisher types within the performance channel that you think are also uniquely positioned to capitalise on rising video consumption?
Simon: We designed Pixmoto to fit seamlessly into a user’s online journey. Different products need to be presented in different ways, so we developed different flavours of Pixmoto to suit each of these customer journeys. This put us in a unique position of being able to work with all types of advertisers and publishers that are looking to embrace the future of video advertising.
Take the beauty category for example. For several years now beauty brands across the globe continue to produce an incredible number of makeup tutorials to showcase their products. Pixmoto Prime and Premier work really well with this style of content by providing a way for the user to interact and transact the products contained within the video, without destroying the overall video experience.
Product review content has also exploded over the last few years. It seems almost every special interest publisher has an extensive number of “best of” posts reviewing the latest and greatest products in each category. Advertisers like Currys PC World have embraced this trend and are producing large numbers of high quality original product demonstration reviews for specific products. Again, Pixmoto Prime and Premier are the perfect match for this style of content.
And lastly, one of the great things about recipe videos is that ingredients, cookware and even matching wines are largely generic, which allows existing videos to be repurposed to feature different brands and products. “Chicken is always chicken”, as we say, and Pixmoto has the power to take any existing video content and feature a different brand and buying opportunity.
Paul: As an Awin technology partner, can you tell us how Pixmoto are working with Awin to help make video monetisation available across the group?
Simon: There are two key ways Pixmoto is doing this. Perhaps the most obvious is by simply opening up video as an affiliate revenue channel for Awin brands and publishers.
The second and, perhaps more subtle way, is making it possible for brands, retailers and publishers with existing video content to repurpose that content for new campaigns. If it’s good enough for Amazon to repurpose a brand's existing video content, then it should be a no-brainer for publishers to replicate this experience in content-based articles like reviews and collections etc.
One of the key challenges with video content is getting noticed. When you create a new 5-ingredient recipe video, you have to compete with thousands of other 5-ingredient recipe videos that already rank well in the search engines.
What if, instead of trying to get your new video noticed, you were able to repurpose an existing video that was already performing well and had hundreds of thousands of views.
Pixmoto lets you do just that, it’s possible to convert an existing video into a sponsored video in about 5 minutes.
So, in conjunction with Awin, we’ve created a “Recurring Revenue Tenancy Bundle” program to help advertisers and publishers tap into the vast ocean of existing, high-performing video content and create entirely new campaigns and product placement opportunities at scale.
Paul: Thanks, Simon, for giving a really interesting overview of Pixmoto and the video landscape. I’m sure there are plenty of advertisers and publishers who will be eager to get started and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing your work with the Hut Group.
You can see Pixmoto's Prime and Premier in action here and Pixmoto's Food Experience here.
To start working with Pixmoto, please email publishersuccess@awin.com.
