I always play around with innovative video technology to see what’s appropriate for me to use. Here’s the original article we ran over on Building43 about Veeple’s interactive video technology, and here you can see the technology in use, click on things in the video to make things happen! (If you are reading this on Google Buzz or somewhere else in an RSS reader you will probably have to visit my blog at http://scobleizer.com to see this demo — iPad version not available yet).
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In the crowded field of online video, very few platforms can offer true interactivity. One that can is Veeple, a three-year-old company that makes watching videos on the internet less like watching TV, and more like the engagement that abounds on the rest of the web.
“If you have ever put an image, or an icon, into a PowerPoint presentation or into a Word doc, you know how to make your videos interactive,” explains Veeple founder and CEO Scott Broomfield. Content creators can link almost anything—a link to an outside web page, a pdf, a panel that pops up with contact info or a Twitter feed—to what’s going on, on-screen.
Another opportunity Veeple creates is the ability to keep viewers in. “Instead of putting video inside of a web site,” says Broomfield, “you’re now able to put a web site inside of a video. So no matter where a video traffics, wherever it goes on the web, all your messaging flows with it.” And that messaging is working: customers using Veeple’s best-practices model are seeing an average click-through rate of 29.5 percent—a ridiculously high number, if you consider the average rate is 1 or 2 percent.
“What we’ve learned from our customers is that every video has an intention,” Broomfield says. “They’re not putting up a video randomly. They want people to view it; they want somebody to do something with it; they want to tell a story. And the viewer often wants to go deeper—they just don’t know how.”
More info:
Veeple web site: http://www.veeple.com/
Veeple examples and demos: http://veepletv.com/
Veeple profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/veeple
Scobleizer 
cool technology … i wish clicking on the hotspot didn’t stop the video … or at least it might be nice to give the end-user | viewer the option to choose a preference to stop the video or not … nice clip though, thanks for sharing
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Neat, Scoble. As a show host/video creator, I’m trying to think how we might utilize something like this on RISE…hmmmmm……
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provides countless opps for video content…wonder if they have any success stories around using the ‘buy now’ button for commerce plays?
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it’s annoying that the video stops when clicking on a link, is it configurable, Robert?
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Been following a number of players in this space… that needs some killer apps and a few more UI solutions, like voice and gesture and a ‘fav pool’ to avoid screen clutter and stop/start playback… which disrupts the content message and viewing experience as much as buffering.
When a viewer can say cool Tshirt, nice chair or What? and its recorded, time sync’d and pooled along with other comments from a session, or a viewer can do a drag gesture to pull an item in the vid to a device icon at the bottom of the screen… then you got something that will engage without disrupting. And the killer apps will come out to play.
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Can you post some of the other players you feel are in this space? I am developing something that slightly overlaps and would be interested in seeing the directions that others are going. I think in general this is a really promising space, but I agree with your comments about seeing more solutions (which is always the chicken-and-egg thing, of course).
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There are others but some that come to mind are:
overlay.tv
coincident.tv
videoplaza.com
plymedia.com
clikthrough.com
videoclix.tv
conciseclick.com
wirewax.com
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TVCLOUD – Great thoughts – Note that all of your ideas are already on our road map. These are early days with interactivity and we are already meeting with some great results. Ideas such as yours, when implemented, will only improve the experience. Keep ’em coming! – Doug Broomfield, Veeple, SVP User Experience
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Loususi and drama: the pause video feature can be customized, along with many other features. What you see in the video here is the most basic of features, it gets far more robust if you want it to.
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Great technology that adds an important layer to video… I’d love to see more podcasts like diggnation use this sort of feature!
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I’ve been a Veeple user from the beginning and I must say, I completely love the technology and have found it useful for an incredible number of things. It gives the video producer multiple new ways to communicate with the viewer and takes video communication, already the most effective by far, to a whole new level of functionality. Someday, interactivity will probably be so ubiquitous people will wonder how the world ever got along without it. It is that useful.
It is also highly effective. There is absolutely no doubt that interactivity improves the click through rates. The highest I have heard of is 63%, which is simply mind boggling. I have been able to show hundreds of my blog readers and clients the interactivity and without exception, they ALL love it. By golly, I think Veeple is on to something!
Thanks for this great post and interview.
Lorraine Grula
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I’ve been a Veeple user from the beginning and I must say, I completely love the technology and have found it useful for an incredible number of things. It gives the video producer multiple new ways to communicate with the viewer and takes video communication, already the most effective by far, to a whole new level of functionality. Someday, interactivity will probably be so ubiquitous people will wonder how the world ever got along without it. It is that useful.
It is also highly effective. There is absolutely no doubt that interactivity improves the click through rates. The highest I have heard of is 63%, which is simply mind boggling. I have been able to show hundreds of my blog readers and clients the interactivity and without exception, they ALL love it. By golly, I think Veeple is on to something!
Thanks for this great post and interview.
Lorraine Grula
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I’m a bit puzzled by the comments about the video pausing. If it didn’t, a viewer reading a pdf or getting “more information” and many other interactions would be missing content and in some cases new options for interaction downstream. That said I’m pleased to read that the pause feature can be customized. It’s always nice to have more rather than fewer choices in the creative process. I’m excited about the possibilities for engagement, now and coming.
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I’ve been a Veeple user from the beginning and I must say, I completely love the technology and have found it useful for an incredible number of things. It gives the video producer multiple new ways to communicate with the viewer and takes video communication, already the most effective by far, to a whole new level of functionality.
Someday, interactivity will probably be so ubiquitous people will wonder how the world ever got along without it. It is that useful. I’ve been making videos for over thirty years so I’ve seen the industry and technology change a lot. Interactivity is more useful to a content producer than many other advancements. It’s wonderful to have such a versatile new element to use.
It is also highly effective. There is absolutely no doubt that interactivity improves the click through rates. The highest I have heard of is 63%, which is simply mind boggling. All the links and info are contained within the video so folks can’t miss them.
I run a video production blog and have been able to show hundreds of readers and clients the interactivity and without exception, they ALL love it. By golly, I think Veeple is on to something!
Lorraine Grula
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excellent post….thank you!
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He( http://WWW.AooMall.COM ) seemed very good
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great interview, keep up the good work!
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