I am all hot and bothered over video “advertising”, but not so much advertising. I want real world customers and users testifying as to the value of a customer’s services, products, and overall value. Yesterday I met with a major retailer about their online SEM and other marketing needs and I believe very strongly that that firm could get a lot of value by adding customer testimonials as well as real life case studies. I also am pushing clients into community and content with video as well to drive lower cost search engine marketing (SEM) by utilizing indirect terms to content rather “buy this” terms. I call it “Indirect SEM” “Indirect Search Engine Marketing (Maybe I should trademark it).

Great content alone doesn’t cut it. Marketers need to put their online video content to work across a number of different channels. With promotional campaigns, high-quality destination sites and custom channel branding, marketers can increase user interaction and participation while communicating their message to a wider and more engaged audience than ever before.

The real challenge of online video is about what (as in what makes good video content, if you don’t have good content then you’re toast anyways) and it’s about where: figuring out how and where to use online video, while still maintaining the integrity of brand. If done right, there are a variety of ways for companies to distribute and display online video to grab an audience and retain their attention.

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A great example of a recent successful promotional contest is the collaboration JVC developed with VMIX. VMIX provided a platform and a JVC custom channel for the “Create Our Commercial Contest,” which asked individuals to submit self-produced ads that they filmed with their new JVC Everio camera to the VMIX JVC channel.

The online video contest produced more than 80 quality entries for JVC, garnered national print and web publicity for JVC and the winner, and ultimately provided a major grassroots marketing campaign for JVC, targeting lifestyle, college, retail and events. The winner of the online promotional contest received $2,500 and saw his commercial aired on Spike TV.

Source: iMedia Connection: Veni, Video, Vici: Conquer Online Video