16

Jul

Buy the Product Featured in That New Music Video…Before the Video is Even Over

Posted by: Jeremy Reither

Years ago marketers talked about the possibility of consumers interacting with videos and shows they watch by pointing to the screen to get more information about the products featured, like the clothes the actors wear. Well, a company called Clikthrough is actually making that happen. Very cool. But I predict the road to profitability is going to be a long one.

The screenshot below is from a music video featured on Clikthrough.com. Throughout the entire video you can point your mouse to the people, places, and things you see. When you point to an item you get more information (or in the case of ‘things,’ sometimes the ability to buy them). At the moment of this screenshot I pointed to a pair of jeans, and whaddaya know – those very jeans are available for purchase over on the right side of the screen.

The marketing potential is obvious. But the genius of this is that as a casual viewer, with little or no interest in buying a product, I can still enjoy the video and this cool interactive feature…because I can also point to the people or places to find out more about them. Like the old VH1 TV show, Pop Up Video, the interactive video appeals to people who just want to know more about the video itself. If those casual users like the featured products, Clikthrough says, even better.

Clikthrough only has 39 videos right now, which sounds like a ridiculously tiny library until you consider the amount of work it must take to ‘tag’ each video with all the information. They clearly won’t be accepting user generated videos any time soon…they’re sticking to the videos that may potentially get hundreds of thousands or millions of views. That’s the only way the work required to make these videos interactive could possibly be worth their time.

Whether they can profit enough from the cross-promotions to make sense of all the work it takes to tag these videos – who knows. But some investors have put a little faith in them in the form of a recent $1 Million investment…so they have that going for them.