Whatever You Do, Please Don’t Stop The Videos

One of the things I’ve noticed is the majority of video players currently being used across the Internet put up a large stop sign after the selected video has been played. This morning I watched a video from Kara Swisher that did exactly that. I’ve embedded the video below so you get the idea.

Most of the large video sharing sites (e.g. YouTube, Viddler, DailyMotion, etc.) offer some videos to switch to after the first one has completed. How many people actually switch off to another video? Isn’t there a better way?

As a marketer, I don’t understand the reasoning behind stopping the video after the initial selection has completed. Kara has a huge library of great videos but unfortunately the viewer may never see any of them. There should be a never-ending stream of Kara’s videos for me to hop from one to the next. This new stream would allow me to see more of Kara’s work, interact with it, and potentially find something I’d be likely to share.

Here’s an idea for the video sharing sites: When I upload a video, allow me to pick a "piggyback video". The piggyback video is the one I’d like to play after the initial video. The way it would work is also simple. Video A plays, short delay to select another video and if nothing is selected, Video B begins. For home made video players and corporate-players like Brightcove (which powers Kara’s videos), make a stream. Even if we only move from one video to two back-to-back videos, the branding and reach just doubled. Technical how-to videos would also benefit from piggybacking. I could show one way to solve the Rubik’s cube and then piggyback someone else and their way to solve it.

There are some analytics issues to work through with this idea but the positive content and marketing benefits are strong enough that the idea is worth a look.