Overlay.TV brings interactive video to online retail - New Overlay.TV for Retail offering allows retailers to harness professional and user-generated video for online sales

Overlay.TV brings interactive video to online retail - New Overlay.TV for Retail offering allows retailers to harness professional and user-generated video for online sales

OTTAWA, June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Online video has become a staple of most web users' media diet, yet very few online retailers have been able to harness the opportunity provided by video e-commerce. Overlay.TV, a leader in user-generated clickable video, is seeking to change that with the launch of its new e-commerce product, Overlay.TV for Retail.

The enterprise platform allows a seamless integration of interactive video into product pages, brand experience pages, face-to-face video chat and user-generated video ratings and testimonials. This radically simplifies the process of including user-generated content by allowing merchants to pair UGC with professionally created video and moderate it with a built-in dashboard.

"There's no doubt that video can increase sales," says Rob Lane, CEO of Overlay.TV. "Retailers have been slow to capitalize on this trend, largely because of the technical issues that come along with video storing, streaming and integration into existing product catalogs and inventory systems. We've taken away the technical problems, and packaged it in a way that makes the process easy to manage and entirely focused on sales."

Beyond simply offering a platform for product videos, the clickable technology behind Overlay.TV allows merchants to easily repurpose brand-created video content by adding links to product catalogues and inventory databases.

"Our view is that adding video is a half-step in the right direction, but you need to have a plan for how it's going to be built into the sales process," says Lane. "The interactivity that our system builds allows customers to shop within a video regardless of whether it's on the storefront or embedded on a blog."

Video e-commerce also holds strong potential for the companies to build their online community over the long term.

"The business of business today is increasingly about building communities, which can drive sales and improve customer service. User-generated content will become user-generated commerce," said James Governor, industry analyst and co-founder of RedMonk. "Overlay.TV for Retail is designed to help manage online commerce using interactive video."

Lane believes that the possibility for brand experiences combined with the focus on personalized service and recommendations will bring video e-commerce further into the mainstream.

"Once consumers begin to experience the social and personal aspects that interactive video can bring to the shopping experience, they're going to begin to demand it," says Lane. "As consumers, we're quick to adjust to a new baseline, and I think this raises the bar significantly."

The company has just launched the product publicly, and has already signed a major client that will be launching later in the summer. For more information, a white paper on interactive video is available for download from the Overlay.TV website.

About Overlay.TV

Overlay.TV is an interactive media company that provides a video commerce platform that enables brands, online retailers and content owners to monetize and customize their video through interactive widgets and tools that allow everything from hyperlinks to video-in-video mashups. Overlay.TV is a private company headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. For more information, please visit www.overlay.tv.

Source: Overlay.TV

CONTACT: Ryan Anderson, Overlay.TV, (613) 266-9041,
ryan.anderson@overlay.tv; Links: Overlay.TV website: http://www.overlay.tv/;
Overlay.TV for Retail: http://www.overlay.tv/retail; White Paper: Value Beyond
Video - How Interactive Video is Changing Online Retail:
http://www.overlay.tv/pdf/overlaytv_retail.pdf; Overlay.TV on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/overlaytv

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