Eric Guerin of Adelie Studios, an industry leader in online marketing animated video production, and Heather Riley of SmartMarket Media were honored as recipients of a Telly Award in the professional services category for their short online video animation developed for JCSI (a recruitment consulting company specializing in sourcing and screening passive candidates) The video was selected from thousands of entries for its entertainment and originality.

“Winning a Telly Award is a wonderful affirmation of the quality of work we bring to animation projects,” said Eric Guerin of Adelie Studios. “Knowing that the competition is judged by some of the best industry professionals lets us know our creative direction and leadership in online animated video production is appreciated not only by our customers but also by some of the finest producers working today.”

Founded in 1978, the Telly Awards is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, interactive agencies, and corporate video departments in the world.

This year, the Telly Awards received over 11,000 entries from all 50 states and countries around the world. Silver and bronze statuettes are awarded based on creativity and outstanding achievement in a specific category.

Have you considered Facebook video advertising units as part of your online video marketing strategy? If you haven’t (or didn’t know it was an option) here’s some statistics to consider.

TubeMogul just released a recent report analyzing Facebook Video Advertising where they took a look at 25 major video advertising campaigns that ran identical videos within Facebook ad units and also ran similar click-to-play video ad units on various publisher sites. The sample compared resulting cost, viewing-time and  spans over 60 million cumulative views. Here are some important findings from their report with some of my own opinions intertwined in their results:

Why should you care about video on Facebook?

Facebook is one of the top-ten video sites in the world without even trying to be. According to a report by Comscore, Facebook was the 5th largest video site in April in total videos played coming in above dedicated video sites like CBS Interactive and even Hulu.

According to the study done by TubeMogul, Facebook also delivers some of the most engaged viewers online. Their study found that Facebook leads all other discovery sources in terms of minutes-watched per view.

Overall, it found that completion rates for Facebook ads were roughly 5.5% to 9.5% higher than identical videos run in display units on outside publisher sites. The Facebook virtual currency (or in-game video ad) also had the longest average view time, at 54.7 seconds per view, followed by the Facebook in-banner, at 48.6 seconds, the third-party in-banner, 39.6, and the Facebook interstitial (i.e. preroll video ads), at 11.2.

It’s no surprise to me that the interstitials had the shortest view time because most viewers if given the option to skip them and get to the content they were originally trying to get to…will skip them. Even though in most cases they are much shorter than any of the other video ad formats here.

3/4 of Facebook ad units sampled have a lower average cost per view than comparable offsite display. Virtual currency ads were also the big winner here at 30 cents on a cost-per-view basis. That compares to $5.27 for Facebook app in-banner ads, $1.06 for Facebook’s sponsored video unit, and $1.07 for stand-alone video ads on other sites.

Other interesting stats

Viewers were more likely to share videos in Facebook’s virtual currency and app in-banner ads with friends on Facebook or Twitter at 1.5% – 2% than video ads on other sites which were less than ½% for offsite video ads.

The click-through rate on the virtual currency ad was also highest, at 5%, versus just over 3% for video display ads on third-party sites.

Herein lies a problem for marketers

So you may be thinking “Wow you get a lot of bang for your buck with the virtual currency, where do I sign up?” Not quite so fast. While social games like Farmville have a monthly audience of over 70 million this may not be the right demographic for your product, service or brand. So research the social game carefully before placing a video ad campaign. Also be wary that many of these game developers break the rules and allow gamers to click play on a video ad multiple times just to rack up points.

So while the numbers may look impressive make sure you know your audience and research the game first. Is the virtual currency model in gaming the next big thing for video advertising? Are you REALLY getting an engaged viewer or are they just clicking through because they think that will earn them more points? What do you think?

Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Maruxa Murphy for the Video Marketing Telesummit. It was a lot of fun talking about the usage of animation for online marketing applications and having a great discussion on the topic.

There are 11 other interviews done with some outstanding video peeps representing different specialties of online video marketing. The others interviewed for this series include: Michael Koenigs of Traffic Geyser, Perry Lawrence of AskMrVideo.com, Andrew Lock creator of the podcast “Help My Business Sucks!”, Josh Anderson of Internet Business Ideas Inc, webinar expert Stephen Beck, David Frey of Marketing Best Practices, video newsletter expert Michael Yost, Will Franco of jiveSYSTEMS, Joshua Aikens of Flixify,  Michelle Cox of Metacafe (who I’d also interviewed a couple years ago) and video blogging extraordinaire and all around great guy from the Boston social media scene Steve Garfield.

If you are interested in checking out the series it runs from 6/14 – 6/18 (my session happens to be on Friday 6/18 from 1-4pm EST). Register to listen to the entire series or just one session for FREE.

Here’s the description of my session for the event.

Eric Guerin

“How To Grab Your Customers By The Eyeballs And Keep Them Glued To The Screen Through Fun And Effective Animated Videos For Your Business”

Eric Guerin has over 15 years experience in the visual communications field working for marketing firms in and around Boston MA. Eric started his own company, Adelie Studios, in 1999 with the mission of providing an integrated solution to customer’s print and web design needs.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this presentation…

• Discover the 2 types of video animation that is often overlooked in video marketing today
• The easiest and most unique way to position your products in your video marketing strategy
• The #1 way you can grab your audience’s attention in the first 5 seconds of your video
• Why 53% of your current viewers are NOT watching your entire video (and how you can immediately change these stats to your favor!)
• 3 superstar tips to getting your videos viewed by your intended audience again and again
• How to create high-converting videos without your talking head in the video
• The single most powerful way to get more views to your videos
• How Google Site Maps can get your videos dominating Google searches within hours
• 3 major reasons your audience will want to pass on your animated video
• The fastest way to get your audience to see your animated videos through your email marketing campaigns

Register to listen to the entire series or just one session for FREE.