Video Content-as-a-Service: Manage Video Content Better

Managing video content

In 2018, the global Enterprise Video market size was US$3.68 billion and it is expected to reach US$10.4 billion by the end of 2025 (MarketWatch). Staggering, eh?

This continuing explosion in the popularity of video has made it a must-have tool for publishers, broadcasters, brands, creatives, agencies and, of course, video tech companies.

When teams in an organisation produce video content (and it really doesn’t matter how much), they need to be able to easily access it, re-use it, collaborate on it, and share it on various platforms in different formats. But video content is complex so existing content management systems don’t cope with it well and can be very problematic when you want to scale your operations.

Key challenges

In Gartner’s report on how to use Content-as-a-Service (CaaS), it identifies the key challenges as:

  • New channels emerge and, to support them, we create new silos of content, causing fragmentation and increasing complexity; 
  • Businesses looking to move away from monolithic architectures and large, single-vendor implementations must choose a home for their customer-facing content.

Content-as-a-Service vs DAM

These challenges may not be solvable through the digital asset management (DAM) system — in fact, your DAM may well be your biggest problem. So let’s take a look at five ways in which CaaS is fundamentally different from a DAM:

  • CaaS is in the cloud — DAM started on premise and is legacy technology;
  • CaaS provides micro-services — it’s not a monolith;
  • Easy to use — no need to be a librarian or highly trained;
  • Low cost — you only pay for what you need;
  • It’s a service — not a product. We describe Services in what they do. Whereas we describe Products by how they look.

Now here’s the techie stuff

Content-as-a-Service is the creation, management and delivery of content via a headless approach, usually, an API serving JSON, decoupled from presentation tiers. In digital commerce, this often also combines elements of PIM and WCM.

Er…thanks for that, Gartner. For those of us that don’t speak techie, could you draw us a picture?

Uses of Content-as-a-Service

  • Enhance and improve existing content channels without re-platforming. 
  • Extend content to new channels while retaining consistency and continuity. 
  • Consolidate multiple content silos into a single, cross-channel service. 
  • Deliver part of an API-oriented architectural approach for new digital initiatives.

Solve the problem

CaaS provides an emerging solution to the problem of managing video content. Some include DAM capabilities and/or video integration. We’d be delighted to explain more about how Content-as-a-Service will work with your existing DAM to help you save time and money on video management. Just click here to start the conversation.

Creating Content: Personalization Versus Speed

Digital technology has revolutionised the film and video production industries, confining celluloid to a handful of highly-funded Hollywood movies. But more importantly for the business sector, it has democratized video production: now it’s as common for enterprises to make videos as it is for film studios to make movies. 

The era of personalization

But this is not just the video age, it’s also the era of personalization. In the same way that no-one wants their doctor to treat them the same as the other patients in the waiting room, consumers want brands to see each of them as an individual and create content they feel was authentically made and designed just for them. This is how brands create a connection with people.

So how are brands doing in terms of creating personalized content and what barriers are they facing?

How well are brands doing?

Adobe recently published a survey on The State of Creative and Marketing Collaboration, which set out to uncover how creatives, marketers, advertisers and IT professionals are working together to keep up with the fast pace of content creation and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

They surveyed more than 1,000 people in those roles, mostly in companies with more than 500 employees.

The results show that brands are struggling with content creation, in particular the length of time it takes to turn personalized content around. The survey reveals that it takes brands, on average, 17 hours to create a single piece of short form content! This rises to 27 hours to create a single piece of long form content, such as video. It takes companies, on average, 12 days to take a single piece of content to market!

Image courtesy of Adobe Systems Incorporated

What’s stopping us?

The survey also looked at the barriers to personalization of content: the time investment needed to create and iterate content comes out on top. Other issues which surfaced include requests for minor changes and the difficulty of tracking feedback about each version created.

Image courtesy of Adobe Systems Incorporated

“Is this approved for publication yet?”

All of these conclusions suggest that brands’ review and approvals process for content is slow and clunky. Delays in getting content reviewed and approved for publication means slower time to value. 

Therefore, a streamlined, efficient workflow is required. A cloud-based video asset management platform like Overcast HQ allows you to notify your colleagues and clients when you’ve shared content with them. Then — instead of wasting time getting people together for meetings — they can view and review your videos in one place, facilitating a speedy approvals process.

It’s also super-easy to identify which part of the video they’d like tweaked since all comments are time-stamped. In addition, instant commenting — like instant messaging — allows you to collaborate in real time with your team, colleagues and clients, which is another big time-saver.

How well do professionals think they’re doing?

Adobe’s survey reveals a disconnect between how colleagues from different departments perceive the effectiveness of the content workflow. 54% of IT professionals believe content creation and delivery are very well coordinated, but this contrasts with just 28% of marketing executives. 

Image courtesy of Adobe Systems Incorporated

Another fascinating insight is that the number of agency and brand creatives, advertisers, marketers and IT professionals involved in content creation and delivery has increased significantly in the past few years: 75% more in the case of IT professionals!

How can we do better?

This is an astounding increase across all roles and it shows the centrality of creating content — in particular, personalized content — in the business world today. We must all become creators and publishers. In order to do that efficiently and effectively, we need to learn to manage content better.

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