TouchCast lets video producers embed interactive web elements including images, maps, web pages and other videos inside digital video, each expanding when clicked on by viewers, opening up possibilities for immersive storytelling.
The BBC has been using TouchCast on iPad since this summer on a range of stories from Ebola and the Scottish referendum to architecture and cats
“(WSJ) is about to roll out TouchCast on a regular basis,” Schonfeld tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “There’s a talented crew making WSJ interactive videos.
“It’s going to be a completely new form of video for them. They’re being super-creative. Most of their pieces are in the studio. Sarah Murray does stand-ups in the newsroom. They figured out a way to really rapidly do interactive videos about breaking news.”
As well as using its production suite, customers integrate with TouchCast’s player software. Founded a couple of years ago, TouchCast may be geared toward interactive editorial today – but it’s easy to imagine advertisers taking interest, too. “Our engagement is through the roof,” Schonfeld adds. “More than 50% of people who view these TouchCasts are actually clicking on at least one element – that’s unheard of.”
]]>The startup counts broadcasters and newspapers amongst early adopters on the editorial side. “Their people on the advertising side want access to TouchCast as well because they see the engagement rates that we’re getting,” Schonfeld tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We’re developing an advertising unit that we call a TouchAd.”
<iframe width=”480″ height=”270″ src=”//www.touchcast.com/e/4562&autoplay=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen> </iframe>
<iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”//www.touchcast.com/e/
TouchCast lets video producers embed interactive web elements including images, maps, web pages and other videos inside digital video, each expanding when clicked on by viewers, opening up possibilities for immersive storytelling. Schonfeld has told Beet.TV half of users click on elements in TouchCasts – something which may interest advertisers disappointed at traditional video pre-roll performance.
“People are also using it for corporate training videos – many large corps are interested in TouchCast as an internal communications tools,” Schonfeld added.
]]>“The editing bay is very much a bottleneck for large-scale video production,” he tells Beet.TV. “You can’t make enough video, even if you tripled your staff.
“If I can arm reporters or brands with a base level of quality, I can multiply by five or 10 the number of video producers in my organization – that answers the scale and cost question.”
TouchCast -the TouchPad app and desktop version lets producers put web content in to video windows. Used currently in the education sector, Schonfeld says this year he will take the wraps off the next customer category – broadcast and print media companies that have been testing the service.
Schonfeld was interviewed by Beet.TV founder Andy Plesser at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
]]>“I don’t mind how I reach a person as long as I have the right content reaching that person in the right environment,” she says in this deep-dive discussion of multi-screen programming and moving media budget across platforms. The agency has worked closely with audience platform Videology to analyze share shifts. “What you need to think about is the overall budget and share shift from TV into online video so you can think holistically about audio and visual regardless of the platform.”
Starcom works closely with Twitter via a strategic partnership and has used the social platform for clients such as Coca-Cola, Tide and P&G. With Oreo, the brand made a mark with its SuperBowl response, “You can dunk in the dark.” Being able to move quickly and respond to news and social media is vital for a brand today, she adds. This can be achieved by making sure teams within an agency are meeting and talking. Tide, for instance, has teams that meet every week to review the news and what they are hearing in social and how to activate on that information, Giacosa says. That helped the brand to create a TV ad in response to Tide being used in a NASCAR race previously.
For more insight into Starcom’s multiscreen approach, check out this video interview.
]]>Video ad tech outfit Innovid helps advertisers create video ads with “calls to action”. “You can open a microsite inside the video,” CEO Tal Chalozin tells Beet.TV.
And Chalozin reckons the widgets, bells, whistles and clickable things Innovid embeds inside mere video ads multiply viewer engagement.
“Just regular pre-roll with no interactive elements, the average is sub-1% engagement rates,” he says. “Just by telling the story in a nice, polished way, 3% to 5% of the people will end up click. It gets up to 20%.”
Of those numbers, tablet users display highest engagement rates, whilst connected TV viewers stay watching ads for longer, the Chalozin adds.
Chalozin was interviewed by TouchCast co-founder Erick Schonfield at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
]]>It is this “economy of scale,” not just advertising rates, which is essential for the industry to mature and prosper, he says. He says that the future needs to be a sort of “content exchange” among publishers – who both syndicate and aggregate videos from each other.
The New York Times, The Washington Post as “Frenemies”
Also in this session is Rebecca Howard, General Manager of Video for the New York Times and Steven Schiffman, General Manager of Video for The Washington Post both address the opportunities around syndication and scale for news video. The Times has recently joined the AOL syndication platform.
In a separate interview, Schiffman posits the notion of a consortium of premium video producers.
Disclaimer: Beet Media has syndication agreement with AOL and AOL was a sponsor of the executive retreat. AP
]]>
But, still, lean-forward video consumption like that pioneered by music videos from Arcade Fire are a rarity.
‘What hasn’t really happened yet is a revolution in creation – everything we see is still a lean-back experience,” says Erick Schonfeld, the co-founder of TouchCast, a new start-up aiming to make online video clickable, swipeable and chock-full of web widgets.
“We don’t think plain vanilla video is the native experience people expect when they’re watching online on their tablets. You expect to touch it.”
We spoke with Schonfeld at Beet.TV’s executive retreat in Viques, Puerto Rico.
]]>This week, Schonfeld tells Beet.TV the startup has clocked over 100,000 app downloads and is making in-roads in to the education market. Next, however, could be media companies.
“We’re in a pilot right now with a large media company,” Schonfeld says in this video interview. “And (we’re) talking to media companies across the board about how do you introduce this to their newsroom so we see not just consumer, user-generated TouchCasts, which is our entry to the market, but also large media companies creating TouchCasts.”
With TouchCast, text-heavy online news publishers could present a package primarily in video, with web articles zoomed in by touching an embedded page thumbnail. Vice versa, broadcasters could augment their wares with related pages, maps or polls, right in the video player.
For them, such usage could go hand-in-hand with another planned TouchCast development. “We’re working on a PC version which is going to come out later this year,” Schonfeld tells Beet.TV. “That has the same UI and key new features – the ability to import video, multi-camera support and live video streaming right on top of your TouchCast.
“We see that as a tool for media companies and others to produce more robust TouchCasts.” Schonfeld says the outfit will license its authoring tool and player for money.
]]>The event is very much about diversity of innovation, he explains in this interview with Beet.TV He says, there is no shortage of women for tech conferences. In the interview, he speaks about a number of themes to expect at the conference.
Schonfeld, the former editor of TechCrunch, was appointed Executive Producer for DEMO last year.
]]>