The Digital Video Frontier: Long Form Programming

It’s always cold on the frontier. Mix into the equation an unprecedented market environment and you have an Arctic bite at your face. Digital video is meeting this bite with a bite of its own. It’s called ROI and the return on investment it’s generating is now accelerating a move by sophisticated marketers away from traditional media that portends very good things for the industry. At the front of this trend is long form programming, a form of video advertising that will continue to drive the push from 30 second storytelling to a whole another level.

So what is long form programming in the first place? Long form programming is defined as any form of video that is longer than a 60 second television spot. It can be packaged into such things as a video commercial, an infomercial or an original program with subtle product placement. It is a sandbox for marketers who are experimenting with it at unprecedented levels and making the digital video arena one of the most exciting places to be in all of media.

While marketers are experimenting with long form programming they are still generating ROI even as they test. For instance, marketers like American Express are able to capture similar cpms in the digital video space as they do in more traditional forms of media, only in the case of digital– everything’s trackable. It provides a level of accountability paramount in the minds of advertisers in these troubled times. Now American Express can understand the gross amount of time a viewer watched their programming and quantify the value created for their spend. This aspect of long form programming is helping marketers capture returns that they have simply been unable to understand before and will only accelerate as more data becomes available and standardized.

For now, the marketers are leveraging long form programming in a multitude of ways. While American Express is distributing CEO interviews for its OPEN brand, companies like Hewlett-Packard are creating original entertainment programs like “Dorm Storm,” a vehicle which provides multiple product placement opportunities in an environment aimed at their niche target market. No matter how the shows are spliced and distributed, the marketers are garnering benefits. These results are seeding the next generation of programming. Distribution is getting better and better with these efforts and soon, technology will allow for them to become even more segmented and more results driven.

The last frontier will be upon us soon and that’s when the creative born in the programming will truly speak to its audience. Once that is accomplished, one can envision actionable content that empowers the audience to act on its message and call-to-action. ROI will not only come from the gross amount of time that an audience will experience the brand, but also how it will act on the brand’s message. Early signs suggest powerful things will come from this frontier. Perhaps even, the learnings that come from long form programming, will inform the 15 or 30 second television spot creators. Wouldn’t that be ironic, if the digital video industry helped its counterparts in TV usher in a new age of 30 second spots!