Why Your Business Needs Web Videos

Gone is the time when commercials appeared exclusively on television. Nowadays, businesses can benefit from an Internet video commercial or promotion.

Pew Internet & American Life Project, a research initiative, estimates that 57% of Internet users have watched videos online. And worldwide online video revenue is expected to leap to $4.5 billion in 2012 from $1.2 billion in 2008, according to In-Stat, a market research firm. Web video has been around long enough for businesses to no longer make excuses for not being in the game.

Why Promote Business with Video?

"Video has become what brochures were in previous decades," says Jeremy Richter, co-founder and president of Chicago-based multimedia company Richter Studios. "Videos have the ability to emotionally connect with a viewer. The right combination of music, sound effects and imagery can leave a lasting impression on viewers and, most importantly, get them to act on it."

Edward Royce, founder and president of Royce Multimedia , has an even simpler answer as to why a business should be promoted with video -- because competitors are going to do it.

Royce adds that analytics should convince businesses of the need for Web video. "There's such good software out there now that can track who's looking at your site, where they're going, how long they are staying and what seemed to be of interest to them," says Royce.