As you may have heard, Mobile Marketing was acquired by digital marketing events company Masterclassing at the beginning of the year. Following this, Mobile Marketing will now be covering all of Masterclassing’s London Masterclass events in addition to its own Summit series.

At todays Masterclassing Video Masterclass event in London, members of senior management from B2C brands were brought together with digital experts to discuss the use of video to increase page views, customer engagement, brand affinity, and more through advertising and branded content.

If you weren’t able to attend the conference, here are a selection of some of the best soundbites from the day.

“When you take a YouTube embed and just post it somewhere on the page, you not only open your web property to outside content but you lose a lot of the control you have over the journey. YouTube knows who’s watching, so it’s going to suggest videos that it thinks are relevant to you – not to your brand or your company. Doesn’t matter if it’s a competitor, doesn’t matter if it’s relevant, or even if it’s appropriate.”

“We’ve all seen and heard something about [360 and VR]. It’s a very hot topic at the moment… Producers and video people are just starting to experiment with it and no doubt we’ve seen some campaigns that seem a bit gimmicky. It’s in the early adoption stages, people are still trying to figure out where it is an appropriate format of content. What we’ve found is that there are certain industries where it can be applied really well. Some of them are real estate, industrials, and tourism.”

Luis Garcia, online video consultant at Brightcove kicked the proceedings off letting the brands in the room know the importance of getting your video hosting right and taking advantage of newer, more adventurous formats.

“We all know of the existing ad verification and brand safety businesses. I do believe there are a few shortcomings when it comes to their infrastructure. One of which is that they do not serve your ads… They don’t have actual integrations with the publishers, in terms of delivering those into an actual video player.

“So, how they verify is by utilising pixels. A pixel is the same as an ad impression – you can put a pixel wherever you want. And I guarantee you, if you get 12, 20 bunches in a room and ask them how they count an impression or how they verify the pixels, they’ll give a different answer.”

Ad verification and brand safety businesses are falling short when it comes to their offerings, according to Ren Kainth, video sales manager at Taboola.

“We all know the growing importance of video in advertising. There’s a great number of benefits and it’s just a case of how we enable people to actually leverage that and make better video.”

Businesses need to figure out the best way to take advantage of video advertising to appeal to consumers, says Mark Sinfield, UK & Europe client director at Genero.

“Best practice is going to change for every single department of every single business. For example, Hello Fresh aren’t going to have the same best practice as UBS, UBS aren’t going to have the same as Schroders. So, we need to make sure that we are making a bespoke strategy of best practice toward our target audience. At the end of the day, your content needs are going to be dictated by your target audience.”

“Good video content marketers are demanding transparency, you need control from start to finish. If you’re not getting a detailed quote, you don’t have control over your content. If you don’t know what’s happening in that whole production process, you’re not in control of the output.

“Good video content marketers do not settle for less than great. You need to be working with specialists, you can’t be going to the same pool of talent to create all of your content.”

“Data & analytics are the key measurements to success. If you’re not measuring the results of your video, there’s really no point in doing it, becomes incredibly difficult to ask for more budget next time round and, at the end of the day, you don’t know if you’re making an impact on the business. You really need to be investing in data & analytics.”

Mitchell Brown, growth director at 90 Seconds provided businesses with the lowdown on the steps to take to ensure the most effective video content marketing.

“When you’re showing through a video… there are seven different areas of the brain that are actually being imprinted on. So, a 320 per cent increase in the chance of your story being remembered. The message in that is that if you actually want your audience to remember it, make a video.”

All the evidence is there to suggest that video demands attention and gets large amount of the brain working, according to Mike Pritchett, CEO at Shootsta, and Bazz Deans, Europe VP at Shootsta.

“TV is a really effective way to build your brand, but when you couple that with digital, and video in particular, you’ve got a really powerful combination.”

“If pay attention to a few rules, keep listening to what your audiences love, keep an eye on what is trending – what could we be? – then you’ve got a pretty good shot of making something really impactful.”  

Melissa Fretwell, marketing director at Box Plus Network rounded off the event giving the audience an insight into the company’s video strategy and what other brands can do to be just as successful in the video space.