Driven by lockdowns and remote work, video content consumption has tremendously increased in the last two years, with consumers watching 14.6 billion minutes of video in 2021, a 121 per cent increase from two years before.

Video marketing is expanding and reaching more consumers than ever before across the most popular social media platforms. Every brand is looking for ways to flex their creative muscles via video marketing in engaging with their online customers. 

Since more and more consumers spend a quarter or more of their time watching videos, businesses are using video marketing. I’ve rounded up five video marketing trends I believe we’ll see in video marketing this year.

The explosion of short-form videos

The information age has changed the general attention span. With shorter attention spans, less is more. People can consume the short-form video content quickly and capture the audience’s attention easily.

We also observed that brands have a strong preference in leaning toward short-form video content, ranging from 20 seconds to two minutes.

According to a study by Wootag, the audience overall prefers content between 15-30s with a minimum average view time of 11s which translates to a minimum reach of 50 per cent of the video watched.

Brands are also adopting innovative ways to increase completion for videos that are 30 seconds or more. In videos created by brands that are 30 seconds or more, we have seen brands adopting innovative ways to increase completion such as letting users watch more at the end of their 30s or enabling an interactive means to watch the remaining or building sequences.

Also Read: Diversity and inclusion marketing campaigns: Everyone, everyday, forever

If you want to capture the audience’s attention easily, a short video across 15 to 30 seconds is your choice.

Live video drives far more engagement, the demand is increasing

A recent study projects that the global video streaming market will reach US$184.27 billion by 2027. With 5G technology, it will open up even more new opportunities. Live video is a way to expand your digital presence and potential customer bases by attracting thousands of viewers on social channels.

Moreover, live streaming leads to discussion amongst viewers. In general, it drives six times more interactions over regularly posted videos.  The raw footage with “no-retakes” creates a sense of intensity that isn’t as mimicked in pre-recorded videos and facilitates two-way communication.

It helps customers know brands up close and allows brands to showcase their products or services in an authentic manner. Thanks to the direct interaction with audiences via live comments and Q&A, brands provide audience engagement to viewers which makes them feel like VIPs.

Interactive videos are booming

Interactive videos enable the audience to interact with the video content itself in a variety of ways (including branches, data inputs, quizzes). With interactivity, on average seven seconds are spent interacting with the elements of the video that promotes consideration of the product and/or brand itself.

Through the branches, data inputs, surveys and quizzes, brands can understand the users who they are and what they are interested in. It can be an effective way for marketers to build their target segment.

Customised solutions and services can help business and finance brands to engage with their customers according to the needs of their audience. In the automotive industry, where promotions involve a more lean-forward experience with booking test drives, sign-ups for the latest deals and first come first serve services. 

We have seen a jump in conversions through sign ups, product sales, and a minimum 4X uplift of awareness from the campaigns with the interactivity on our platform last year. 

Men’s health company, Roman, ran a very successful campaign to educate users about their products using instant experience and doubled their CTR and sales with a 45 per cent higher conversion rate.

Shoppable videos will make a big splash

We are entering the era of always-on shopping as we can window shop throughout the day digitally. According to Google research, 63 per cent of YouTube viewers in the UK say that they bought from a brand as a result of seeing it on YouTube.

Bridging the gap between discovery and purchase to deliver a seamless and personalised experience that exceeds customer expectations is critical.

Interactive shoppable videos can simplify the purchase and allow customers directly experience the brand and shop within videos. It reduced customer frustration of constantly redirecting between advertisement pop-ups and websites.

Also Read: 3 stages of marketing for your startup that can drive effective results

Interaction in video improved overall customer experience, conversion and loyalty to the brand. On average, interactive shoppable video drove uplifted four times the traffic to the brand’s e-commerce site.

Data-led video marketing campaign will drive the success

In the digital era, indicators like impressions, completion rates and clickthrough rates will allow marketers to quantify overall campaign performance. Beyond this, there are some ways to gain specific insights and measure them like other digital marketing campaigns to make your future campaign successful.

Through creating multiple segments and running individual tags per segment, you can build audiences based on various engagement parameters and personalise the video content.

Planning a device wise campaign is also a way to understand more the behaviour of your target audience and optimise your strategy based on the data.

Each of the campaigns has its uniqueness, utilising data to analyse and decide the time of interaction in the duration of the video, and real-world signals such as time, weather, sports, etc to create dynamic interactions are both vital to make the campaigns more effective.

In conclusion

Video marketing has never been more important for brands to connect with their audience, capture their behaviour and eventually nurture them to a purchase or conversion.

Under the new normal, marketers have to integrate Video Marketing into their digital marketing and content strategy to reach and engage with audiences.

You will capitalise on this growing segment to increase conversion rate, superior reach and deliver a personalised experience to audiences. 

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It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say blockchain-based play-to-earn (P2E) games are now a key source of income for many people worldwide. 

Take the Philippines, for instance, where Axie Infinity feeds many a mouth. The P2E metaverse game became very popular in the archipelago, with COVID-19 destroying the jobs and livelihoods of many.

Welcome to the exciting world of P2E games.

But for any of the gaming companies in the market, including Axie Infinity, the journey to the top was not easy. It took great effort, grit and determination. To top it all, Axie built a compelling product with the consumer in mind.

“Getting gamers to embrace your blockchain or metaverse games requires more than hard work,” says Hung Tran. “You cannot win their hearts unless your games are fun and user-friendly.”

P2E vs POE

And this is exactly the cornerstone of the ‘play, own, earn’ (POE) model that Summoners Arena, a startup founded by Tran, has developed. “We remove entry barriers and promote sustainable development where gamers can focus on gameplay while also enjoying financial benefits,” he adds.

Summoners Arena, which Tran, a serial entrepreneur, founded in Vietnam in May 2021, is a role-playing game (RPG) that aims to redefine user experience in the blockchain gaming space. (RPG refers to games in which players take on the roles of imaginary characters who engage in adventures, typically in a particular fantasy setting overseen by a referee).

Also Read: How Sipher won high-profile VCs’ hearts even before its blockchain games hit the market

Summoners Arena integrates traditional and blockchain gaming elements to provide a multi-layered experience for players to participate in immersive gameplay and experience true ownership over gaming assets while earning digital assets.

In this game, players summon heroes to engage in five-vs-five battles with fellow Summoners through various game modes and settings, with heroes represented as NFTs with unique stats and features.

Summoners Arena is set out to be a multi-game universe of various genres made into a franchise based on the antique lore of Summonia and Summonian Heroes.

“Our game requires players to strategically plan their resources, items, characters, and formation to maximise the gaming experience. It is heavily based on the players’ decision-making. This makes it a perfect fit for the current blockchain and crypto uprising,” Tran remarks.

Bridging the gap

In Tran’s opinion, the primary purpose of any game is to satisfy the users in terms of entertainment. However, most P2E gaming players are significantly driven by the earning aspect. The reasons can be ascribed to the lack of sufficient gaming structure or the sophistication of the gameplay.

“We are here to bridge that gap. We aim to help build the blockchain gaming industry to become more balanced between ‘playing’ and ‘earning’ aspects,” adds Tran, who is also the co-founder of OneSoft (the 16th largest game publisher in the world in 2021) and ex-CEO of ABI Game Studio.

“Users can fully enjoy our game and play it in longer terms, just like what they are doing now in the traditional market. At the same time, it gives them the right to control their in-game asset (the NFTs aspect) and can earn some profit while playing. This is what our POE is all about.”

Also Read: Metaverse is around the corner and you should play a role in it

The company claims to have millions of users worldwide playing the traditional version of Summoners Arena.

Summoners Arena is scheduled to launch two official versions of the game, a non-blockchain free-to-play (F2P) version where users cannot earn digital assets and a play-own-earn version. Players of the F2P version are rewarded with free characters and features when they join the POE version.

In the blockchain version (Mainnet), players can play a specific set of game features out of more than ten features already favoured by the players of the traditional version, such as PvP (person vs person), PvE (person vs environment), Dungeon, Weapon Forging, and Black Market.

Even though the Mainnet version has not been launched, it already has many users playing its open beta version. The recent statistics suggest that its strongest user base is from Asia. Tran says the closed beta tests were oversubscribed with over 5,000 users from different countries.

“Besides this, our development team has integrated a mix of NFT and non-NFT structures, allowing traditional players and new blockchain players to experience the game without initial capital investment,” he maintains.

GameFi and opportunities

Global blockchain games account for just a tiny percentage of the overall gaming industry. This presents a massive opportunity.

“One of our goals is to bring the real gaming experience to games on blockchain and convert the traditional gaming users to GameFi (a combination of game and finance) players. Hence, it only gives more benefits for players besides their entertaining purposes,” he explains. 

“Summoners Arena would like to pave the way for traditional gamers towards an easily accessible blockchain game with a well-developed P2E model.”

To date, the gaming startup has raised US$4.25 million across seed funding and strategic financing round. The investors include Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Onechain Technology, GuildFi, Merit Circle, Cosmic Guild, Coin98 Ventures, Istari Ventures, Spartan Group, Impossible Finance, Kyber Ventures, and Kyros Ventures. Prominent angels, including Chang-Han Kim, CEO of Krafton, and Mirza Uddin from Injective Labs, are also among its backers.

Also Read: Infinity Force scores US$5.5M seed funding led by Animoca to provide infra for global P2E communities

Undoubtedly, P2E games are spearheading a new age of blockchain gaming. The opportunity to earn real money by playing a game with blockchain technology and NFTs is attracting even more players and games to the market.

Shortly, more sophisticated products may change the whole GameFi landscape. Summoners Arena intends to bridge the migration of traditional gamers into the crypto world.

But can it emulate the success of the likes of Axie Infinity?

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In an interview with CNBC, Gary Vaynerchuk predicted that 98 per cent of NFT projects would fail. Despite the unfavourable prognosis, he’s still hopeful that the industry will eventually mature and become a permanent fixture in the mainstream. We can expect an extremely volatile market from all the speculation until then.  

Success in the NFT space has generally been characterised by two factors:

• How many of the NFTs were minted out
• What is the floor price?

These KPIs encapsulate the perceived value and potential of these projects through demand and price discovery. Granted that these metrics are valid, there is a trend that I’ve been observing among the projects that have been deemed successful: a secondary mint.

“Where do we go from here? The suspense is a thrill.” – Urbandub

Founders expend a tremendous amount of energy and resources to get the perfect mix of art, tech, community, and utility, culminating in a first NFT mint.

The project will have raised enough capital to implement the plans identified in their roadmap if they get it right.  Which begs the question, why would you need a second mint?

Technical limitations

Once on the blockchain, always on the blockchain. There is no way to easily edit a smart contract or the digital assets tied to it once it has been minted.

If a security flaw was overlooked, or utility offering changes, it will take gargantuan efforts to enforce edits. This leaves little incentive to develop complicated smart contracts at the outset.

As a result, first-generation NFTs tend to be access tokens only which by now have templatised smart contracts at the ready.

Further, a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain can only occupy a maximum of 24KB. This means that complicated dApps need to be split across multiple contracts.

Also Read: Women of Web3: Top women contributors tell us all we need to know about Web3

We can imagine multiple succeeding drops needed to implement a complex contract in its entirety. This is one of the reasons why you’ll find new utility, staking, the introduction of tokens, and play-to-earn mechanisms released in next-generation NFTs.

Keeping things on the down-low

Ideas are cheap, implementation is everything. That’s what you learn as a Web2 startup founder. But there’s still a degree of secrecy that you need to maintain when building your project. This is one thing that boggled me when I entered the Web3 world.

The spirit of collaboration is unparalleled. Especially in the beginning, roadmaps were very comprehensive. You knew exactly where the projects were headed.

These days, builders are more strategic with how they release information to prevent being shafted. The utility released through a 2nd Gen NFT then functions as a hedge on your IP. 

Another benefit of a second-generation NFT is more realistic timelines. One thing I noticed about people invested in NFTs is that they move on a different timescale.

Because it may take time to build a good thing, a slow release of additional benefits may be necessary. Founders can then deliver on their initial promises and add more value to the project as capacity increases.

Storytelling that converts to brand love

It was on April 23, 2021 when Bored Ape Yacht Club first opened minting to the public. In a week, the 10k PFP collection was sold out. On August 28, a token, serums, were arbitrarily airdropped to all holders.

Those who aped in knew it was coming, but v1.0 of the roadmap gave no specifics. As soon as the BAYC holders exposed their beloved Apes to the free serum, Mutant Apes were unleashed.

That experience was storytelling gold that created the hype for 2nd generation mint, among other marketing efforts. The build-up generated over months that peaked with the Ape glow-up drove the demand for the 20k PFP MAYC project so much that mint sold it out in one hour.

That’s the power of a story. Besides, who doesn’t like free things? 

Increasing reach

One crucial decision that founders face when they launch a PFP project is the number of NFTs in a collection. The number that seems to stick is 10k. Or, at times, an auspicious 8,888. In a market where the price is driven by supply and demand, too many tokens may drive the price down.

Also Read: Are NFTs and celebrities a match made in heaven?

Second generation NFTs allow you to increase the number of holders while keeping tabs on the price. This is an approach that  World of Women took.

With their successful genesis collection sold out and a floor price that tracked well even eight months after the initial mint, the team offered 22,222 second-generation NFTs through its WoW Galaxy collection.

More holders increase the visibility of the project and the causes that they support. All while retaining the value for those in the community.

Inflection points

Jungle Freaks is slated to release its third round of NFTs called the Fallout Freaks in May 2022. The team touts “New Artist, New Team, New Era”. They’ve onboarded award-winning Brazilian artist, Andre Muller to lead the way.

Fallout Freaks’ art aims to set a new standard for detail and design, bringing a fresh and modern expression of the Jungle Freaks. Fallout Freaks is the token that completes the JF ecosystem.

Together with JF Gen 1 and JF Motor Club (that serves as a metaverse pass and P2E game), Fallout Freaks brings in the final funding needed to transform Jungle Freaks which started out as a family project into a formidable self-sustaining business model.

Final thoughts

We do need to address the elephant in the room: succeeding NFT drops are a form of fundraising.

One question is why an NFT project would require additional funding months after raising 686Eth (in the case of WoW). Web3 sceptics attribute this to sheer greed, especially with the speculative nature of the space.

However, I think there are sound reasons to create a second-generation drop. Founders can wield this strategy to build long-term value for their shareholders, just like a Series A, B, and C fundraising round for startups.

Simpler projects may not need it, but when it’s time to scale up, it’s time for that next drop.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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Filipino cloud kitchen startup MadEats has secured US$1.7 million in seed funding from JAM Fund, Crystal Towers Capital, and Starling Ventures.

The Manila Angel Investors Network and Rebel Fund, a VC fund powered by a network of Y Combinator alumni, also co-invested in the round.

MadEats previously raised funding from Y Combinator and 335 Fund (run by Paymongo Co-Founder Luis Sia).

MadEats is an online delivery-only restaurant group. It builds its own food concepts, takes orders from its virtual storefront, and fulfills deliveries with its own fleet of riders.

Also Read: How Philippine cloud kitchen industry is piggybacking on the country’s unique food culture, shifting customer behaviour

Since starting in November 2020, MadEats has launched six brands — Yang Gang (Korean fried chicken shop), Chow Time (Chinese takeout), Fried Nice (fried rice), Dot Coffee, MadBakes (desserts), and MadMakes (for bulk orders, corporate packages, and packed meals).

It currently has three ghost kitchens in Makati, Quezon City, and Manila. MadEats plans to expand further in Metro Manila.

The expansion also includes plans to enable its kitchens with advanced technologies, an end-to-end ecosystem of apps, services, custom third-party integrations, and MadKitchenOS. So far, the platform features an automated order routing system and analytics.

Also Read: All female-led MadEats ropes in Tinder co-founder as investor to scale its internet food brands in Philippines

“We want MadEats to be the modern-day virtual restaurant, focusing on creating better products and scaling them faster through ghost kitchens, so customers get a better dining experience, wherever they are,” said CEO Mikee Villareal.

In November 2020, MadEats bagged an undisclosed sum in pre-seed investment, led by Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, with the participation of Luis Sia.

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Initially, he wanted to build a solution to streamline the employee rewards process for his BPO employer based in the Philippines. With his minimal knowledge of creating no-code websites and the help of YouTube tutorials, Bo Discarga managed to launch the first version of the solution, MyRewards.

“But as the company started using the solution, internal demands to cater to a bigger audience emerged. We kept adding new functionalities to MyRewards, which paved the way for the birth of Betterteem,” he says.

Discarga (CEO) and Rey Leonard Dumasig (CTO) co-founded Betterteem in Metro Manila in 2021 with a mission to find out and define the specific drivers of employee experience in the BPO sector in Asia Pacific.

An amalgamation of various apps

Betterteem is a predictive workplace app focused on the overall employee journey. It uses machine learning to predict employee churn, provides on-demand mental health support to them, and is a digital community platform to influence their experience positively. Betterteem does this by sifting through volumes of data coming in and out of the app after its daily use by employees.

In simple words, Betterteem amalgamates the features of several HR apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, HRIS, SharePoint, and Intranet. This allows the app to collect usage data and create predictive analytics of a team member’s experience. It alerts people leaders/HR executives about their experience and attrition possibility using its predictive analytics.

Also Read: How machine learning really impacts us in our daily lives

Before founding Betterteem, Discarga spent ten-plus years managing employee engagement and experience in the Philippine BPO sector. In the past, he worked as an employee experience leader for Bank of America, Startek, Accenture, Quantrics, and JPMorgan.

His partner Dumasig is a tech strategist with over 15 years of experience developing and supervising system infrastructure, data security, and implementation of new technologies.

Betterteem targets industries such as telco, hospitality, and healthcare with its app. However, for the next two years, the focus is on the BPO industry in APAC, which accounts for about 38 per cent of the global outsourcing market.

“We realise that for us to be successful in APAC, we will need to start winning in the Philippines, the outsourcing capital of the region. The local BPO sector accounts for about 18 per cent of the global outsourcing market and about 30 per cent of the APAC market. So the focus will be on the local BPO industry for the next two years,” he shares.

If the app is a success in this market, then it will be taken to a market in the APAC region. The region’s total addressable market is estimated to be US$1.18 billion, with over 12.3 million employees as of 2021 and a projected CAGR of 8.5 per cent through 2028.

Betterteem, launched in December last year, currently runs a pilot with several organisations. It bills them per active employee on the platform (US$2.12 a month).

The app mainly competes with similar apps in North America with a presence in the region. “However,” he claims, “the flexibility of our system to integrate into the existing HR solutions of our clients makes us unique. This makes us work with any existing HR systems our clients may already have.”

Betterteem has just announced a US$500,000 fundraise from local angel fund Buko Ventures and IdeaSpace, a non-profit, local startup accelerator. “We have raised this capital to convert our minimum viable product into a billable product, which will allow us to onboard 10,000 users by the end of Q3 and generate an MRR of US$20,000.”

Data privacy regulation is a concern

The AI venture foresees specific challenges as it scales the business. The growing number of new data privacy regulations is one. “Since our business is heavily reliant on collecting data, navigating data compliance will continue to be a challenge for us. Compliance is more challenging because there are no general regulations to comply with, so we would have to tailor-fit our compliance per territory we are serving,” he notes.

Nevertheless, Discarga believes Betterteem’s AI-powered solutions will be the default expectation of the market it serves over the coming years. “This is based on our firm belief that digitalising HR is not just ‘nice to have’ but a necessity for organisations’ future growth and acceleration.”
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