As of June 2017, Netflix will be introducing interactive videos, which allows the viewer to choose their own film or series plot.
The streaming service announced an ambitious experiment in interactive storytelling with the children's programme ‘Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile.’
The shows, which offer thousands of permutations, allow users to select their own adventure, putting millions of people in the Director’s chair.
Netflix is well known for its personalised service, providing individual subscribers with recommendations most relevant to them. Now, much like VideoSmart, Netflix has ventured into the realms of interactive video, taking that personalised experience to new heights.
The new branching technique allows tales to be paused at certain points, and a choice to be offered. For example, should Puss befriend the bears he just encountered, or fight them? Your decision dictates his next move and changes the arc of the story.
Puss in Book offers viewers a total of 13 opportunities to shape the story, which features two possible endings. You can reach the end of the programme in just 18 minutes, or as long as 39. This provides three thousand possible permutations of how the story could go.
Much like Netflix, VideoSmart has faced some interesting findings along the way with its own solution. For example, all the decisions made by each person creates an enormous amount of data on each individual.
Are they going back and making alternative choices, and what choices have they not chosen to explore at all? That kind of information is valuable and, much like other customer data, should be monetised to create better future experiences.
VideoSmart provides the end to end solution for personalised and interactive videos; Netflix incorporates both trends into their service offerings. But imagine this was taken one step further.
Let’s consider the power of merging both technologies to create personalised interactive videos. Each decision made throughout the video drives scenes that are personalised specifically to each individual. For example, take insurance customers.
Viewers may be asked what they wish to understand more about – the optional extras available to them, or their current policy details. If they choose to explore optional extras, all the add-ons that particular customer does not currently have will be explained to them.
Subsequently, the customer could be offered the chance to learn more about each product – of course, using the same branching technique. Not only is this user-generated content, but said content is only relevant to one person – its viewer.
This solution has endless applications and can be used in a multitude of ways; to break down complex products for customers and employees, to generate up-sell opportunities, or simply as a fun engagement tool, much like Netflix have.
According to Hubspot, the inclusion of a generic video in your email marketing campaign will increase your open rate by 19% and your CTRs by 65%. If you include an interactive video, those CTRs will increase further by a staggering 35%. Teaming this with personalised video content, which can increase CTRs by 300%+, means… well, you do the maths.
To find out more about personalised and interactive videos, contact us at hello@videosmart.com.