Everything you need to know about Interactive Video (but were afraid to ask!)

July 2024

Everything you need to know about Interactive Video (but were afraid to ask!)

In a nutshell

Most people will, by now, have an idea of what interactive video is, but not exactly what it can do.

At its most basic, interactive video enables viewers to interact with a video while they are watching it, thereby creating greater engagement by offering choice and far greater depth of information than a linear video can deliver.

But that’s just a start

Interactive video has the ability to make the most effective form of digital communication, i.e. video, even more effective.

So how does interactive video do this? Here are just some of the ways:

Pop-ups

Interactive video enables you to keep your video short and sweet, while at the same time, through clickable ‘hotspots’ that trigger information pop-ups, it allows the viewer to access additional information.

So it appeals to the viewer who just wants an overview just as well as those who want to dig deeper for more detail. So you can have your cake and eat it!

Choice

Interactive video offers choice about what and how you view.

It allows you to create a video experience that works for people with different needs and different levels of understanding.

From the Alfred to Albert

For example, imagine a video that explains a complex medical condition – and you want to explain it to the patient, to their families, to carers, as well as to medical staff.

Each with different needs and differing levels of understanding.

Through a simple menu page, interactive video allows viewers to choose a version of the video that is tailored to their level of understanding and individual needs.

Shoppable

Here’s a relatively new word, ‘shoppable’ video.

Shoppable video combines the energy and engagement of a promotional video with in-video e-commerce functionality. That means you can identify, save and purchase stuff directly from within the video, as it plays. How cool is that!

Calls to action

When you make a video it’s usually because you want to motivate your audience to understand something or do something, to take some kind of action.

This opportunity is often missed – usually because the viewer moves quickly onto the next thing. Interactive video, however, allows you to embed calls to action into the video, so the viewer can take action – contact you, look at your website, sign up or purchase something – immediately, before their interest moves onto something else. Gold dust!

Quizzes, surveys and polls

How often would you like to be able to gauge an audiences’ reaction to your video – measure their understanding or get feedback around your offer?

Uniquely, interactive video allows you to embed knowledge quizzes, polls and feedback forms into your video so you can gather information that is so hard to come by and so often lost once the viewer has finished watching your video.