What are actions?
Actions are interactive elements that you can add to your videos to increase engagement and drive viewers to take a next step--in other words, ask viewers to perform an “action”.
An Action can be any step that you want a viewer to take in response to your video. You can ask viewers to:
- book a meeting in your calendar
- download a related piece of content (e.g. whitepaper)
- click through to your company’s website
- start a follow-up conversation via email
- submit information in a form
- + much more
Whether it takes the shape of a button, a banner or fillable form fields, Actions allow you to facilitate further connections with your viewers and encourage a response to your video.
Get to know the different types of Actions in Vidyard
The different types of Actions that you can add to your videos depends on your account's subscription plan with Vidyard.
Below is a quick summary of the primary differences between Actions based on plan type.
Type of Actions | Plan Availability | Key points |
Basic Actions ⬆️ Use 2 out-of-the-box Actions to drive next steps for your viewers |
Vidyard Pro |
|
Quick Actions ⬆️⬆️ Use 3 simple templates to create Actions for common use cases: a fullscreen, banner, or email gate CTA |
Teams, Business and Enterprise |
|
Custom Actions ⬆️⬆️⬆️ Fully customizable Actions |
Teams (with premium add-on), Business and Enterprise |
|
How do I start using Actions?
Simply select the Actions icon from the main menu to get started.
In Vidyard Teams, Business or Enterprise accounts, you can also select an individual video to edit and assign specific Actions.
- Sign in to your Vidyard account
- Select the Actions icon from the main menu
Learn more about how to use actions in Vidyard Pro
Users that belong to a Team with the Edit Videos permission can manage Actions in your account. There are 2 places to manage Actions. You can either:
- Select the Actions icon from the main menu to manage the list of Actions within your current folder
OR - Select a video from your library, then click on Actions to add or edit existing actions on a video
Learn more about how to add actions to your videos
Glossary of terms related to Actions
Here are some common terms that you might encounter when reading about or using Actions in your account.
Term |
Definition |
in-video action |
An Action that appears inside the frame of the video player |
sharing page action |
An Action that appears on the sharing page itself, underneath your video Sharing page actions are available in Vidyard Pro accounts. |
pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll |
Pre, mid and post-roll all refer to when an action occurs during the playback of a video:
|
fullscreen |
a type of Action that takes up the entire frame inside the video player |
annotation |
an Action that appears during playback, typically to highlight or supplement the content of the video. Annotations typically take form of layered text or images. They are often smaller in size and do not take up the entire frame of the video (for example, a banner that takes up 1/3 of the video frame). |
email capture form |
An Action with a fillable form field to obtain a viewer's email address. Sometimes this type of action is referred to as an "email gate", especially if you make the form a non-skippable and place it at the beginning of your video. |
default action |
Rather than assign an action to multiple videos individually, you can instead set the action as a "default" so that it applies automatically to all videos within a folder. You can only set Default Actions in a Teams, Business or Enterprise accounts. |
Support for in-video Actions on mobile devices
So long as viewers watch your video in a supported browser, the actions that you've added to the video will appear during playback.
However, there are some exceptions when viewing videos on a mobile device. This largely depends on the mobile OS (operating system) and the type of action.
Note: the following chart assumes use of the default browser for each operating system (Chrome or Android, Safari for iOS).
Type of Action | Android (v4.4+) | iOS (v11+) |
Fullscreen (pre & post-roll)
|
✅ Supported |
|
Fullscreen (mid-roll) |
✅ Supported |
✅ Supported (when video plays inline) ❌ Not supported (when video plays in fullscreen mode) |
Annotations
|
✅ Supported |
✅ Supported (when video plays inline) ❌ Not supported (when video plays in fullscreen mode) |
Sharing page actions
|
✅ Supported |