YouTube introduced 360 videos in March last year and Facebook followed closely with the feature rolled out in September 2015. Live videos also arrived on these video platforms and both the features saw good adoption. The initial push to live videos was given by Periscope (and Meerkat to some extent) and travel brands used the platform in interesting ways. Soon this shifted to YouTube and Facebook with YouTube getting the relatively serious kind of content and Facebook getting more of ‘on the go’ broadcasters.

Now YouTube is taking the game a step further with support for 360 degree live videos. This makes it the first platform to offer live 360 degree streaming at a large scale. Facebook does both 360 and live but a combination might be a long way off for them.

3D, 360 and VR is still a complicated puzzle for many and by simplifying the access and opening the gates through 360 videos will go a long way in paving the road for VR technologies that we will see in future.

The possibilities

For brands this new development will offer new opportunities. 360 videos are best experienced on mobile devices and would attract new young tech savvy users to the platform. This means the brands will have wider audience to reach out to.

Travel is the perfect market for the use of 360 videos and the live feature adds yet another option for marketers to explore. Marketing travel requires selling through emotions and what better way to emotionally connect with the audience than replicating the experience in realtime. Brands like Marriot and British Columbia have explored the format in the past to set an example how travel brands can use 360 videos and live will certainly push them to think of new possibilities.

A challenge with live 360 videos would be to keep the content engaging. Even at this point, some of the 360 videos get dull after a while and the novelty factor won’t keep them afloat for long. Destination marketers can use them well and we have seen some interesting 360 video campaigns around them. However they have been created by other travel brands trying to market using the destination connect.

YouTube 360 live allows the content creators to use even some of the most affordable equipment available on market today. With cost of decent 360 degree cameras like Ricoh Theta starting around $400 mark, travel vloggers can explore the possibilities. The end results will offer better experience and early adopters will certainly gain advantage. We might see a new crop of 360 vloggers as more OEMs get into the 360 camera space.

The challenges with 360 live

There are certain challenges with connectivity taking the top spot. 360 videos are data hungry and aren’t seamless even on fast internet connections at times. YouTube will support 1440p videos at 60 fps and live would require fast and stable connection which pushes out most of our cellular connections out of equation.

That said, it is still a promising step in the right direction. Expect more announcements around this at the upcoming Google I/O.

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The debate on topic of who is winning the war of videos is lined up for another day. Right now Facebook is making news with the addition of 360 degree videos on web and Android. 360 degree videos allow the user to see other dimensions of a video at any point. It is like having a photo sphere for every frame in the video. A few days back Facebook announced that its News Feed will now have some 360 degree videos. iOS is on cards as well and the feature will be rolled out to iOS devices in a few months. Safari web browser is also left out at the moment. Right now some big names like Star Wars, GoPro, Discovery and VICE are posting 360 videos.

Only a few months back, YouTube had introduced the feature of 360 degree videos and Facebook has been quick to join the game. They have worked with Oculus to add this new content format to the already long list of formats, the social media platform supports. On desktop, users can change the view by dragging with mouse pointer while on mobile, they can either swipe or turn around with their phone to explore the different views.

How is the experience?

It is surely exciting to be able to just swipe on a video to see what is going on all around. It might not be as good as watching on VR headsets like Samsung Gear VR but is still pretty good. At this point you don’t even have the option to pop your phone into any VR headset like Google Cardboard but who knows they might consider it in future. I first came across a video by GoPro with Motocross freestyle rider Ronnie Renner jumping across sand dunes.

Like we said, the experience isn’t as great as a VR headset but this is without investing into any piece of hardware at all. This means that it already has a much wider reach already making it a stepping stone towards VR. It prepares the world for what could possibly be the next big thing in tech industry. It would also give small scale content creators a boost as they can reach more audience.

What is in it for travel?

The VR industry is still at a nascent stage but the industry experts suggest that it will grow to be a big trend going forward (Read: 5 upcoming travel trends in Asia). Marketers will use it to promote their services while a large number of content creators will come up to provide inspiration. Earlier Google launched the Jump project that came along with the idea of virtual educational tours for students. Marriott recently offered VR Postcard service at two of its prime properties. This move by Facebook will increase the audience beyond the small number of people who have VR headsets and thus offering opportunity for marketers to inspire via 360 degree videos.

Mountain Dew was quick to jump on this with a 360 degree video coming on the launch day. Travel brands can consider the option of making 360 degree video ads to drive more people to their Facebook page. Taking the early mover advantage will work wonders here. Hotels often put up photo spheres or panorama shots of their property and views around it. These videos can replace them while giving a better view to guests. At this point, content creation is a costly affair due to the high equipment costs. You need something like Bublcam, Ricoh Theta or your own custom rig loaded with multiple cameras. This would limit it to bigger brands at this moment but I am sure just the 360 degree video alone would have driven many people to the GoPro Facebook page.

Have you checked out the 360 degree videos on Facebook yet? What do you think of them?

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Self drive car rental company ZoomCar has been attracting a lot of attention during recent times with expansion to new cities, radio ads, big fleet of cars and attractive consumer pricing. They have also been making rapids on digital platforms.

The latest in this series is a tip-off from their marketing team about a YouTube music video. The video conveys the whole idea of Zoomcar in a nice musical theme. The 3minute 25second video rides on the ‘freedom to drive on your own’ theme and conveys the story of a group of friends who use Zoomcar for their next trip. The background score certainly has a nice soothing appeal to it and goes well with the overall theme of the video.

The explosive growth of YouTube as a video consumption platform makes it an absolutely critical choice in any travel related brand’s marketing strategy. We feel that this video is a great attempt by Zoomcar to inspire people to go out and travel! Perhaps, the duration of the video could have been a little shorter as the pace of it doesn’t change in the second-half.

Will the music of the video and the soulful voice behind it create a viral pull? We will soon come to know about that in the coming days!

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