Versaly Entertainment

What is “Branded Video”?  My definition is that it’s simply a title applied to a series of videos.  Supposedly, the title (or brand name) is well-known and will provide a preconceived notion of what the video will contain…and thus, will increase the probability of a user watching it.  In addition, brands typically don’t create themselves, so branded content will come with some potential marketing power behind it.

I feel that is true up to a point.  I feel “Branded Video” may help viewer acquisition, but the shear fact of video being a brand falls way short in providing viewer retention and growth.

Programming, in my opinion, is the number one factor in viewer retention and viewership growth…regardless of branded or unbranded content.  Granted the content has to be good quality and consumers need to be aware of it, but let’s assume they are in order to directly compare branded to unbranded video.

On mobile, a well-programmed unbranded series of videos will outperform poorly-programmed branded video 100% of the time.

On TV, programming which shows are aired on what day-of-the-week and time slot is a huge factor on the success of a show.  It holds true on mobile also.

Versaly, and its Vmbc.tv mobile video distribution network, has been programming mobile video-on-demand channels for more than 3 years and always generates higher-than-average views than its competitors.

Programming includes quantity of videos available at any one time, number of channel refreshes per week, when the refreshes occur, amount of videos added and removed during a refresh, which videos are added and removed, order of the videos (both new and past week’s) within the channel, titles of the videos and other activities which Versaly actively does to drive viewer consumption of our videos within all our channels worldwide.

The top 3 genres of mobile video today are news, weather and sexy girls. Are these really genres which require branding?  Are these genres which benefit from branding?  Yes…to a point.

However, I feel the mobile viewer is a subset of the internet video junkie and is looking for types of videos which are not on television.  I just don’t see mobile video, or mobile TV, being an extension of television.  I see it being an extension on the internet.  Lots of UGC videos, music videos, and raw breaking news.  Re-runs of last nights TV shows are just not compelling enough for the mobile viewer to return over and over again.

For Unbranded Video…which I prefer to call “Original Video” is content that is compelling, without a preconceived notion…that is…until a viewer watches it, likes it, and wants to come back again and again to watch more and more.   Uh oh…that person has now established a preconceived notion of it…is it now “branded”?  Which reaffirms my position on how important programming is.