Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 0:18
Happy Tuesday everyone, I am Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson, a digital strategist with BWG Connect and we are a network and knowledge sharing group. We stay on top of the latest trends, challenges…whatever shaping the digital landscape, we want to know and talk about it. We are on track to do at least 500 of these virtual events this year, due to the increase in demand to better understand the digital space. We'll also be doing at least 100 in person small-format dinners. So if you happen to be in tier one city in the US, feel free to shoot us an email, we'd love to send you an invite, the dinners are typically 15 to 20 people having a discussion around a certain digital topic. And it's always a fantastic time, we spend the majority of our time talking to brands, that's how we stay on top of the latest trends. We'd love to have a conversation with you feel free to drop me a line at tiffany T I F F A N Y @bwgconnect.com. And we can get some time on the calendar. It's from these conversations we understand the content you want to know about and it's also where we gain our resident experts such as Birol who is with us today. Anybody that we asked to teach the collective team has come highly recommended from multiple brands. So if you happen to have any need within the digital space, we have a shortlist of the best of the best. And we wouldn't be happy to provide that information to you. Also note if you have any hiring needs we do partner with a talent agency Hawkeye Search formally BWG Talents that we can put you in contact with as well. A few housekeeping items. First and foremost, we want this to be fun, conversational, educational. So drop as many questions comments you have into the chat, the q&a bar or feel free to email me at tiffany@bwgconnect.com. And we will be sure to get to them. Also note that this is a 30 minute session. So we'll be moving pretty fast. And we will formally wrap up at the 30 minute mark. So with that, let's dive right in and talk about emerging video trends that you cannot ignore the team at Vyrill have been awesome friends and the network. So I'm gonna kick it up to you, Ajay, if you can introduce yourself, and then we can dive into the presentation. That would be fantastic. Thank you.

Ajay Bam 2:10
Yeah, absolutely. So hi, everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. So I'm Ajay Bam, CEO and Co founder of Vyrill. My background… I've been studying shopping behaviors for about 20 years now, previously built and sold an in-store shopping app company. And so started Vyrill about five years ago here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And really the story behind Vyrill is very simple. Shoppers are watching a lot of video content. So reviews, unboxing videos, how-to videos and more before they shop. And they're making a lot of videos after they shop. So there's massive amounts of video content. And the problem is that 95% of the world's video content today is not searchable, and hence is not useful. So how can brands and retailers and solution providers make sense of massive amounts of video data to drive their three key KPIs, which is conversion engagement and customer acquisition is really at the heart of what we do here at Vyrill. So yeah, so we've been in this space for a very, very long time. And now video and TikTok has taken over. And so here we are today to chat about all things video. So you start the conversation here. So thank you.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 3:33
Yeah, thank you for joining in. Did you want to bring up the presentation and we can dive in?

Ajay Bam 3:38
Yeah, absolutely. I will. I wanted to just set the stage here for our q&a for our conversation here, Tiffany. So share with everyone just a couple of quick slides, just to get the conversation started. So I'm sorry. Sorry. So here we go. So just you in terms of you know, what's going on with that social video in us. So primarily as you as we all know, we have heard of these three platforms, but at a quick glance, these are numbers actually from from last year. And as you can see, I think all of these platforms have really surpassed the billion dollar user mark, if you will. And so YouTube has been a legacy platform they've been around for 15 years plus Instagram has been around for 10 years plus and TikTok has been around for now for about three plus years now. So as you can see, I think and we have all heard we have is that TikTok is is the the average time spent on TikTok has been increasing on a on a monthly basis across the board and really, that's happening for a number of reasons. TikTok content tends to be very authentic. tends to be short and entertaining. And of course, the algorithm is quite amazing. And so when you look at these three platforms, YouTube tends to be both long format and short format. So a lot of YouTube content used to be in the past used to be long now it's now it's moving towards short. And then we have TikTok and Instagram, Instagram started as an as an image platform. And now it's moving towards video as well. And so in terms of really just breaking this down by demographics, so I'm sure you're curious about the Gen Z demographics. So just a quick breakdown here. You know, YouTube still continues to lead, but I think it's now starting to move towards TikTok and then followed by followed by Instagram. So just a quick overview of you know, what's happening with the with the Gen Z demographic, again, this is from 2022. And then here's the breakdown of the demographic all the way through 50 Plus, and so, if you look at the type of content being produced on these platforms, and the demographics, so if I start with Tik Tok, it generally is more female skewed tends to have more authentic and entertaining and entertaining content around that's funny and silly and, and short and Tik Tok is a great place to look for identify trends. So I don't know if you've seen this but there's a desk hashtag underscore talk is how a lot of things trend on on Tik Tok. So hashtag food talk hashtag Barbie talk is the big one. I was just looking at the numbers. The hashtag Barbie talk and Barbie movie had over 8 billion views. Wow, TikTok. So that's, that's quite, it's quite massive. And I would say that, you know, for obvious reasons, Barbie is trending across all the platforms. And then when you look at YouTube, YouTube tends to be more skewed towards men. And YouTube actually has the largest number of product reviews that are of any platform. So a lot of long format videos, you know, reviews tend to be long as well. So when you're thinking about which platform has the most reviews, it's usually it's YouTube. And then you have Instagram, Instagram is more of a product discovery platform, that's our that's how I would look at it is it's generally leans towards images. But now it's also moving towards short video formats as well. So we're seeing again, you know, I think everything is moving towards, towards real send shots and more. So that's sort of in general, the direction of video is going towards shorter videos. And then finally, if you're not aware of this, this is a new trend and new feature that Amazon launched, that we should all be aware of. It's called Amazon Inspire. And this is essentially, if you open up your Amazon mobile app, on the app, if you just go all the way to the bottom of the app, there's a little light bulb. And essentially, it's video feed that Amazon has launched. It's all user generated. Influencer and branded content. And literally, it's a 24 by seven feed of video content. So it's reviews. It's gonna be live streaming. So lots going on there. But essentially, Amazon is hyper focused on video reviews. And of course, Amazon, if you're not aware, has also captured more than 100 million video reviews as well UGC content on their platform. So it's just something to be aware of. It's now being rolled out it started as a beta last year. But it's now being rolled out across all users on the Amazon network. So yeah, so that's a quick overview of what's happening in the just to get the conversation started with all things are social and and then this new feature Amazon Inspire.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 9:16
Yes, Amazon has that's so interesting. My background many years ago was home shopping. So to see now like Amazon, everybody can be at home shopping host like everybody is selling everything everybody is recording everything. And so wow what a change it's been in the last 15, 20 years to see that shift of a select few being able to sell something on film to now like everybody saw in everything and Amazon of course leading the way.

Ajay Bam 9:45
Yeah, absolutely.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 9:47
So looking at it from a brand lens, myself having managed a brand online is okay, we work so hard to maybe make some videos and it was like a nice to have back then now now it is a must have. But then to layer the complexity on to it now you must wrangle in all of the user generated content out there. And what are they saying about it, you know, you no longer hold the reins of like what your brand is being portrayed as? And I guess though, how does a brand search this endeavor?

Ajay Bam 10:23
Yeah, so So, so there's sort of multiple sources of video content, right? So there's sort of three primary sources on where video gets produced. So one is, of course, social media content. So those three platforms that I mentioned before, are significant. So you have social media content, you have influencer content. So a lot of brands are working with influences to produce content as well. And then of course, there is branded content as well. Right? So that's one way of looking at it is that you're looking at video sources from all of these three different types of content. And I generally, what we find is, the what really works well for brands is the 8020 rule, which is 80% of content is a generally should be skewed towards UGC and 20%. Towards influencers and branded content. And the reason is, you know, the bottom line is it really comes down to trust. And shoppers trust other shoppers. And so they're more interested in understanding what other shoppers are saying more than they're interested in, in what the brands are saying, I think, you know, I think influences are great for brand awareness. Right. But when it comes to the last mile purchase, I think what ultimately matters is, what is my neighbor saying about this car? Right? What is someone who looks like me, either my graphic my gender? Right? So that's really the bottom line, you know, as you're thinking about content, you know, think about who your target demographic is? Is your target, is your target content that you're featuring, does it feature your target? demographic? Does it feature target content? Right, I think what we're finding is that in every category, there's three or four types of video that drive conversion. So as an example, in the beauty category, it generally tends to be review unboxing video, How To video that drives conversion, but if you flip it to automotive, it generally tends to be a dealership video and inside outside tour of the car, and then a review of the car that drives conversion, right? So multiple ways of thinking about how you can how you can leverage video. And you know, I think one thing I would say is that the quality of videos now that UGC content that's produced, if you're worried as a brand, you know, the the whether the content is whether it's resolution is good or bad. I would say that that shouldn't be a worry anymore. I think with smartphones, generally most videos tend to be pretty slick. Right? So I think that that fear has gone away. And I think I think that also from a when in our shopper studies, customers care less about the perfection of the video, versus more…they care more about the authenticity of the video. Right? That's one of the ways multiple ways of looking at this.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 13:27
Yeah, as a brand where everything was polished, you know, it's not going to be deployed until it's perfect. And now it's the more gritty and real, the better. And the less budget, you need to really,

Ajay Bam 13:40
I mean, that that was on Inspire feed that I just mentioned, it's all you see, you keep scrolling and you'll find people like you're talking about products, which ultimately the driver click through.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 13:51
Very cool. We do have a question about Amazon Inspire. So noted here, one of the attendees say it has a lot of potential, do you feel the need or will be adding a more social element to it by introducing a share with others or having Inspire videos show up as a video review or PDP?

Ajay Bam 14:10
Yeah, I mean, so right now, I think the way we see Inspire working as you can, it's coming from Amazon's a wine program, the influencer program, those videos, it's coming from the UGC carousel that they have on their, on their feeds is coming from the branded content as well. So and really what Amazon is doing is when you sign up for Inspire, you select your interests. So it's a combination of interests along with your history of what you're searching and browsing is how they're showcasing the videos in your in the feed. But absolutely, I think you know, there's anything here Amazon is probably trying to compete with TikTok with short video format and have people stay more on their site and scroll videos, whereas this was this clothing On TikTok or YouTube. So just coming back to the question, though, so absolutely, I mean, I think that everyone should be paying attention. And it's just another way of product recommendation, if you will. And in with Amazon Inspire your product recommendation is being led with video, essentially, is where it's starting. And video is very compelling, right? I mean, you're likely very likely to click on a video when you see something working or a very positive review of that product, and so on. So I think with Amazon Inspire, will see both based on your historical and your purchase history, we'll see that and of course, Amazon is going to create many ways to improve stickiness, whether share or drive more traffic to, to Amazon Inspire, I think I think that's coming.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 15:48
That's good and how old is Amazon Inspire?

Ajay Bam 15:51
So it's about so we first noticed that it was about two years ago that that started testing. And it was only launched for a few users about two years ago. And it started with few categories. And clearly, they must have seen a lot of traction and click throughs. And maybe then also they I'm sure they were monitoring the view time. And I would say about four months ago, around the March timeframe is when it opened up to all users where you can now see the the Amazon Inspire feed. So I'm sure they will be testing the formats and all I have. And of course, I think it's not just purely showing the video, right? It's also sourcing the video as well. Absolutely. So and I think the brand safety is a big feature, right? If you want to make sure that those scrolls are not you know, there's there's no nudity, profanity and all that right. So that's a big concern. And so I think that's why it's taken some time to build this. It's more than just showing a video.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 16:53
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of things to consider. You brought up the in video search. Can you expand on that? Like, what? What is that? And where is it heading?

Ajay Bam 17:02
Yeah, so So as I mentioned before, you know, the biggest challenges today are if, let's say there are 20 videos on your on your PDP. And I'll give you an example. So let's say you're buying a car, you're on the Tesla website, and there are 35 video reviews. If you're looking for a particular car with a particular feature, and you're looking for battery life, if they're 35 videos, how do you know which video is talking about what feature so that's a big problem today is that customers are cannot yet find what they're looking for inside the video. And that's a big problem. You know, most customers today, if you don't have the in video search will either abandon the video experience, and because when they're in their shopping mindset, they instantly want to find the answers. And you know, and there's different kinds of video in the shopping journey that lead to conversion and engagement. Right. So when you're starting your shopping journey, perhaps you're interested in review, you're interested in comparison video between two products. So today, finding what's inside the video is a big problem. So most customers today will watch one video or two video the second video, they don't find the answer, they will just quit. And this is a problem for brands right you're investing your dollars in licensing producing content. And if you can't really get the right content in front of the user, that's a problem. So what video source does is the one of the key problems that it solves is it helps with finding very particular product features that a particular person is searching for. So in the car example, if I'm searching for battery life, it's very important to show the customer the portion of the video or the parts of the video or respond to a video that's talking about battery life. And really the end of the day, what matters is you in order to get the customer's attention the first three seconds when they land or when they see something inside a video the most important things and within video search, you can instantly take the customer to the portion of the video talking about that feature. And that's a huge, huge efficiency and convenience for shoppers. And the other thing we'll see is I think in video searches or to solving some other problems. So it's going to help with personalization of the content. So if I know that you know you're Emma if the if the retailer or the brand knows, and male or female, and my size is medium when they start to surface video content, they can essentially focus on video content that features a medium size for a male or female. So personalization is another big aspect that leads to recommendations as well. So the more the video content is searchable, the more useful it is both for shoppers but also for solution providers and brands and retailers to show more hyper relevant content, you can get a lot of insights from the video as well. So I would say that there are sort of five important insights that you can get from in video search I would say the number number one is sentiment, you know, what are people saying about positive and negative about your product? Second is demographic you know it does it feature your target demographic or does it not? Third is brand safety. So, making sure that the video is doesn't have nudity, profanity or minors in the video as well. There's a lot of rules and regulations on whether you can show minor in the video and or when you can show a minor in the in the video and so on. The fourth would be engagement, you know, is a people are very interested in looking at videos that a lot of other people have viewed on or commented upon, or or liked upon. And then of course, the fifth is relevancy of the video. So as I mentioned before, you know, making sure that the video is featuring relevant content between the UGC influencer and the and, and branded content. And then finally, I would say the biggest benefit is also SEO. You, if you make a video searchable, you can then generate a transcript, you can generate what's in the video as well all the tags. And you can then use the transcript and the tags. So when you actually publish a video on your site, you can include you can enhance all your or you can enrich all you SGML tags, with trans tip and with all the keywords. So you can also get a massive SEO benefit as well. So YouTube recently has an app, Google's search engine has announced recently that they're now giving higher priority to videos. So if you've done a recent search, you know, Google actually is very good at at tagging and offering some search capabilities on YouTube content. But if but, but Google cannot really do that for enterprise videos and other videos as well. So it's very important that you as a brand, use tools to generate a transcript, and identify what's in the video and enhance your SEO capabilities as well. So we're swish we're beginning to see a lot of video surface in search engines. So anyway, so those are some of the key benefits of in video search,

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 22:25
As I say that huge benefits for the ecosystem of your brand, and your eCommerce business. So very, very cool takeaways. They're about five, six minutes left. So any questions comments, put into the chat q&a, and we will get to them a lot of chatter about AI ChatGPT. And like, Where does those two hot topics land within this innovation?

Ajay Bam 22:50
Yeah, I think everywhere the noises and this and the word is the buzz is about ChatGPT, and Gen AI. I would, I would say that, you know, if you're thinking about how to leverage strategy, there's sort of three areas on how a framework on how you can think about leveraging GPT, I would say the first is capturing video content. So the beauty is making video content is now getting cheaper, better, faster. So we're seeing a lot of new content, video creation platforms, where you can quickly add your assets, add your animations, add your voiceovers as you add your target demographic personas, and you can quickly produce videos at scale. So both content automatic video creation. And also, we'll also we're also seeing a lot of Gen AI starting to being used for video editing as well. So whether it's, you know, you're correcting the colors or adjusting your video to match a particular soundtrack and so on. So I think we're going to see, speed and scale sort of come about. And of course, you know, I think the next thing will be personalize it, the personalization of the content as well, is huge as well. So and this is just beyond recommendations, right. So an example of personalization would be the video automatically depending on who's visiting your site changes the the person in the video from a male to female or changes the color of the of the car in the video from to your preferred colors that you might have registered in your account profile and so on. So, a lot of like interesting, you know, real time, I would say real time personalization or modification of a video as a person is watching it. I think that's kind of that's coming as well. We'll see more interactive content as well. You know, I think they can, you know, you'll be able to take actions and even define the direction of where the where the video is, is going next and And then you know, and then finally we like, you know, in terms of insights, I think what we're seeing is, you know, once you have captured and the content as well, we're seeing a lot of Gen AI being used to summarize content, whether it's summarization of your video content, or a summarization of sentiment analysis, and, and so on. And, and then finally, even with leveraging content, you know, as I mentioned before, personalization, and how content is being displayed, and SEO and other areas as well, where we'll see a number of a lot of Gen AI features are being leveraged in the, in the video space. So I think I think we're, you know, we're just at the start of this video revolution, if you will, or evolution. There's a lot of exciting stuff coming down the path we'll see. Also, as as Gen AI gets better as AI tools. And now, Apple recently announced AR and VR as well. So we will begin to see in future another year from now, integration of both video with AR and VR that's coming as well.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 26:10
As I said, they really do go hand in hand. It's exciting times, and it's moving fast, which is exciting and a little scary. But we do have a couple questions here before the end. So oh, we're talking about the retailers? Yes. So retailers are bringing in more and more screens or repurposing screens for in store retail media purposes? Like cooler screens, smart cards in store apps and screens. What role does video play for in store activations? And link factors?

Ajay Bam 26:44
Absolutely a couple of things. First of all, I think that you can use your UGC feeds, UGC content to provide in store feeds and in your, in your stores. We're seeing a big use of QR codes now that are from FM for in store experiences, you can now actually scan QR codes and a lot of your packaging. Now, as you're browsing the store, you can see an unboxing video right then and there. Right. As you're walking in store, you can use QR code to drive to highlight perhaps new products that you have launched in the store. And so customers can instantly see perhaps a review unboxing video or you know, perhaps there's some new key features that you want to share with your customers. So video QR codes is a way to bring and enhance your in store, shopping experiences, and tied back to all the other great video content that you're producing. And of course, you can use all this content for all the all the feeds, inside your in store, media as well.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 27:51
And I love that QR codes have made a resurgence. It's like the renaissance of QR codes like they came about, okay, like what do we do with these and now they're back. And they just fits so perfectly into the digital strategy and like how technology is changing.

Ajay Bam 28:07
And then the other thing I would say is coming as well, as you know, I think many of retailers have apps as well, their own apps, the Walmart app and the target app, and so on. And I think we'll also see features where you can point your camera at a product. And it will instantly highlight any relevant content, maybe reviews for that product that you're interested in featuring. We are your app, right? And wouldn't that be cool? You just point your camera inside the store at a product. And you can see the different reviews? Or perhaps you know, you want a unit? You're interested in comparison video between product a size A versus size B for your Dyson vacuum, right? I mean, this amazing this lot of stuff coming down the pipe.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 28:52
A lot of things to make your homework much more efficient, and knowledge is power. That's awesome. I just thank you so much for the time, the fantastic content, we definitely encourage follow up conversation with the Vyrill team. We'd love to have a conversation with you. That's how we get the content for our future events. So with that it is a wrap. We're out of time. That was so fast, but that was fantastic. Happy Tuesday everyone. Have a lovely week and see you on the next event. Thank you.

Ajay Bam 29:20
Thank you for having me. And you know everyone, please feel free to reach out if you have any other questions or comments. It's my email is pretty straightforward. ajay@vyrill.com and Tiffany will share that as well. So thank you.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 29:33
Thank you so much. Take care.