SundaySky, a provider of automated video production at mass-scale and studio-quality, today celebrates two significant milestones in the company’s growth, namely the creation of a staggering ten million videos and the opening of new offices in France, Germany and the UK. Today’s consumers embrace e-commerce videos: total views for the top 50 US online retailers’ YouTube channels more than doubled in 2010; 74% of those retailers have experimented with at least one product video on their websites. Video is now a proven and an effective tool to boost traffic, lift online salesand increase user engagement.
So if 2010 was about video experimentation 2011 will be about online retailers scaling their video programs. The main challenge e-businesses face when it comes to video is that production is costly and resource-intensive. Creating videos for entire online catalogues (up to tens of thousands of items) is very challenging, all the more so when new products are frequently introduced and their details (prices, reviews, availability) require recurrent updates.
SundaySky has been successfully addressing these issues for clients including the Discovery Channel store, the History Channel store, Adorama and Overstock; these are businesses that have identified the power of videos and chose to video-enable all their product pages. It is only by scaling the video production and enabling it on as many Web-pages as possible, that online shops can really capitalise on the effect of this medium: SundaySky customers regularly see a significant increase in conversion rates, reaching tens of percentage points. In addition video results in search engines are now a prominent traffic source for those websites.
Since it was founded in 2006 SundaySky has grown quickly on the back of the demand for large volumes of automated videos by marketing-savvy organisations. This is what led the company to expand its geographical reach to include Europe, a territory with huge market potential. SundaySky’s technology offers several benefits including:
- Scalability: users can easily create hundreds of thousands of videos a day, with no human intervention
- Quality: studio-quality videos are accompanied by a human voice over to maximise the emotional attachment
- Bespoke look & feel: each video reflects the relevant brand guidelines
- Content maximisation: use of existing textual and rich-media Web content
- Real-time: whenever a product gets updated, the video immediately reflects the changes. Whenever a new product is introduced, a related video is created within seconds
- Multi-channel: videos can be presented in the website, on mobile devices, in newsletters or syndicated to social media sites.
“It is very exciting to have a direct presence in Europe, where SundaySky already counts several clients. Ten million auto-generated videos is another great milestone in our industry and one I am extremely proud of,” said Shmulik Weller, CEO of SundaySky. “More than anything, it shows that the market has matured because today’s online buyers are actively looking for video as part of their shopping experience. As a result, retailers are not only adding video to their website but also in their marketing strategies to make sure they reap its potential as much as possible.”
