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8 Old Video Gaming Consoles We Still Love Today

“Brown Box” — that’s the name of the first-ever multiplayer video game console prototype. It’s the “Father” of all video games, having had existed in 1967.

Its creation is all thanks to the genius and efforts of Ralph Baer, Bill Harrison, and Bill Rusch.

From there, Brown Box became officially-known as “Magnavox Odyssey” in 1972. It’s this system that spawned today’s 200 million global videogamers.

While Odyssey is no longer in circulation, some of the old gaming consoles that it paved the way for still are. They’re still entertaining videogamers and making them shriek in delight, and yes, annoyance. (Game Over, remember?)

Ready to learn what these old school gaming systems are that you can still button-mash? Then let’s get right into it!

1. Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

We’ll start off with this one, and not only because it came out in 1983. That alone, however, already makes it one of the most classic gaming consoles that you can still get today.

The main reason you should pick up an NES is because of Super Mario Bros, Zelda, and Pac-Man. It’s also the console that gave rise to Donkey Kong, Kirby’s Adventure, and a long list of other retro games. Yes, it’s the NES that gave us a platform to enjoy all these billion-dollar hits.

2. Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)

SNES, the improved version of NES, is also one of the top classic game consoles from Nintendo. It first came out in 1991 in the US, and we should be glad it did, as it came out with titles like Super Mario World and SimCity.

Today, you can pick up a SNES Classic and buy video games like Zelda, Kirby, and Final Fantasy aside from Super Mario. There are, in total, 20 titles you can play, plus two special, exclusive releases.

3. Sega Genesis

Want to reminisce all those battles with the mad scientist and evil Doctor Eggman? Well, you’re in luck, because you can, thanks to the release of the Sega Genesis Mini. It’s an emulation of the original Genesis, which means that it comes with 16-bit hardware.

Sega calls it “Mini” because it’s about half the size of the original Genesis console. It’s in no way “mini” when it comes to playable titles, as there are 42 games for you to enjoy. The exact titles vary where you live, but if you’re a hardcore gamer, you’ll know how to get access to many of these.

4. Game Boy

Having celebrated its 30th birthday in 2019, Game Boy still lives up to its name. It’s also thanks to this console that we have a strong market of portable video games today. Since its release, Nintendo has sold over 100 million of the classic and Color versions.

Tetris, Pokemon, Super Mario, Zelda, and Donkey Kong are just to name a few titles playable on Game Boy. Either way, it’s a good investment, especially if you’re always on the go and need something to pass the time with.

5. Retro-Bit

Retro-Bit is one of the classic game systems that allow you to bring home retro arcade games. It has licensed games from big names like Capcom and Nintendo, with titles like Mega Man (2 and 3) and Super Dodge Ball. Other favorites included are Double Dragon, Strider, Final Fight, and BurgerTime.

Retro-Bit may not be as huge as Nintendo, but it’s an inexpensive alternative. Plus, if you’ve got another gamer who lives with you, it’s a great way to have friendly battles for hours on end.

6. Atari Flashback 8

The Atari Flashback 8 lets you take a trip back to the future, in HDMI style. You may think that its 720p feature defeats the purpose, but it’s only there to make the graphics look a bit cleaner. It comes with a couple of 2.4G wireless controllers, so it’s another way to go multiplayer.

Atari’s Flashback 8 is what Nintendo’s SNES Classic is to its fans. In fact, Atari rolled it out at the same time (September 2017) that Nintendo did with its SNES Classic Mini. There are loads of games with the Flashback 8, 120 of them built-in to be exact.

7. C64 Mini

Vividly red joystick — check. Beige keyboard — also check. Waves of nostalgia — definitely.

All these, you get to enjoy with the C64 Mini from Retro Games Ltd. It’s the company’s way of updating and upgrading the Commodore 64 home computer. Yes, it’s for PC gamers out there, which is why it definitely deserves a spot on this list.

Although it’s slightly flawed (stiff joystick, for instance), it’s still retro-packed. You won’t find all the best titles here like Wasteland and Elite, but the rest of the games are still worth it. Speaking of which, there are 64 games that come included with the console.

8. PlayStation Classic

The PlayStation Classic is Sony’s way of combining its new and old gaming systems. It’s a retro console that lets you play 3D games, after all. From Resident Evil to Final Fantasy VII to Metal Gear Solid, the PS Classic gives you all that and more.

Fancy playing with — and winning — over your friends? The PS Classic also lets you do that with multiplayer titles like Twisted Metal and Tekken 3.

All these make the Sony PS Classic a must-have if you’re looking to expand your console collection.

Get Your Game on With These Super Entertaining Old Gaming Consoles

Who says you always need CGI and very realistic graphics just to have fun? That’s not always the case, and this ultimate list of the best and the most fun old gaming consoles says it all. If you’re thinking of treating the gamer in you, then one (or a few) of these units should be some of your top choices.

Ready for more geeky guides like this? Then be sure to head over to this site’s Tech section then!

Everything You Need to Know About Programmatic Video Advertising

A recent survey found out that about 49% of people watch an average of five videos daily. 

Video ads are gaining more traction than most other forms of advertising. Videos prompt significant attention, unlike written content and audio.

Brands are increasingly embracing videos to capture the attention of their target audience. 

Programmatic video advertising refers to the use of bots or software to buy online spaces for digital video advertising. It’s one of the digital advertising techniques taking most industries by storm today. 

Programmatic advertising has a broad scope. Read this guide to learn about programmatic video and ways it can benefit your business. 

What Is Programmatic Video Advertising?

As the term implies, programmatic video ads refer to the ads purchased programmatically through AD exchanges, DSPs, and SSPs. 

In simple form, programmatic video advertising can be defined as the automated transactions that involve selling and buying advertising online. The practice takes advantage of an algorithm that has enhanced cost efficiency and targeting.  

Traditionally, the process necessitated one to request proposals. You also had to work with human negotiations before inserting orders manually. 

With the advent of technology, the automated process can now take place within a second. 

Programmatic video advertising has two ends, which include sellers and advertisers. Sellers hope to gain value from their content. Advertisers, on the other hand, apply software to make proposals and purchase video ad space depending on the criteria received by the bots.

Considering that programmatic display advertising is relatively new, some digital marketers are yet to understand how the technology works. 

If you’re in this category, don’t fret. Check out this systematic guide, simplified to your understanding.

The Process of Programmatic Video Advertising 

If you’re using programmatic advertising, the process starts when a viewer lands on your website. 

The publisher will use the supply-side platform (SSP) to list the advertisement space for the viewer. The SSP represents the publisher, and it takes the form of a seller.

The SSP informs advertisers of all the attributes of the site and the nature of the ad space to prompt DSPs to make their proposal. The seller then promotes the ad space to potential buyers. 

After receiving all the information relating to the ad space, the SSP evaluates the cookies. 

The SSP aims to establish factors such as demographics, interests, and geography. With this info, it is possible to customize the offerings according to the needs of the buyer. 

In the next step, the demand-side platform (DSP) analyzes the information that the SSP provides. The DSPs acts on behalf of the advertiser in choosing an ad space that is in line with the target parameters and advertiser’s budget. It further assigns a value on the ad placement depending on the user and website’s attributes.

The bid placement by DSPs is real-time, which explains the basis of the phrase real-time bidding in programmatics. 

The SSP analyzes the received bids and selects the winner. Some of the commonly used bid strategies include the Client-side, Header bidding, and Waterfall bidding.

Once the SSP has picked the winning bid, it displays the ad on the site of the publisher. This entire process occurs within milliseconds. 

This form of advertising saves time and it’s quite efficient. 

If you’re still unsure how to go about programmatic display advertising, you can seek digital marketing services. The professionals will help you with all your digital marketing needs, from SEO to email marketing.

Why You Should Consider Programmatic Video Advertising 

Initially, human beings were handling the sale and purchase of ad space. 

The process was not only slow but also highly inefficient. Many negotiations and meetings had to take place before an ad could get an online publication.  

Worse still, making any changes to an ad was a nightmare. 

If you wanted to change your targeting, you had to start the negotiation process from scratch. With the growing number of publishers, advertisers couldn’t manage this hectic process. 

Fortunately, automation led to the development of programmatic advertising.

The benefits of programmatic video advertising are worth pursuing. Here are some of the reasons you need to embrace this new advertising technology. 

1. It Allows Proper Ad Budgeting 

In 2019, estimates showed that digital ads in the US were accounting for about $130 billion. 

Companies are allocating a significant amount to digital advertising. As such, it is prudent for marketers to use the allocations on strategies that almost guarantee success. 

Programmatic advertising is the real deal if you want to use your advertising budget well. 

The platform allows you to target viewers, in the right place, and with a suitable message. Through the programmatic, you will eliminate waste, which is usually in the form of uninterested viewers.

2. Wider Reach

Programmatic advertising depends on data. 

You can benefit from the cross-channels, which means a bigger audience. These targeted ads can be on desktop, TVs, mobile, in-apps, and tablets. 

The digital touch-points keep increasing, leading to endless possibilities for programmatic adverts.

3. Real-time Measurement

You don’t have to wait for hours or days to measure the performance of your ad in programmatic advertising. The results are real-time. 

Consequently, you can optimize your campaign based on the outcome of the ad. 

With programmatic advertising, advertisers can adjust and optimize their adverts as necessary. Besides, it is possible to have an oversight on ad spending.

4. Collection of Valuable Consumer Data 

Marketers can collect comprehensive and useful data about their viewers. 

The ad-buying algorithms learn and adapt through the gathered data. Through the learning curve, marketers can modify their adverts after checking out the key metrics of prospective customers. 

Programmatic Video Advertising Is the New Face of Digital Marketing

Implementation of programmatic video ads might seem complicated, but embracing this technology will make your marketing more effective. Once you get it right, the results on your brand awareness will be evident.

Your video ad should be short and captivating. Including entertainment will capture the attention of the user. Ensure that you create the ad video with the target audience in mind.

Keep exploring our site for more content on inbound marketing. 

Millennial Marketing 101: What is Video Marketing?

Americans spend, on average, almost six hours per day watching video. People watch video on their TVs, on their computers, and on mobile devices.

So it only makes sense, as marketers, to use consumer’s love for video in order to sell your product. This idea is known as video marketing, and it has become extremely popular over the last few years.

But, what is video marketing? Why is it so popular and how can it help your business? 

We’re here to answer that question and more in this blog. Read on to learn all about video marketing and the benefits it’ll bring your company.

What Is Video Marketing?

87 percent of businesses use video as a tool for marketing. If you aren’t using video marketing to drive traffic to your site and increase sales, you’re getting left behind your competition.

The goal of video marketing is the same as any other type of marketing: to increase sales and improve customer relations. With video marketing, you’ll create videos that attract customers and get them interested in buying what you have to offer.

These videos can consist of any of the following:

• How-to’s
• Brand promotion
• New services or products
• Customer testimonials
• Live events
• Entertaining and informative content
• And more!

If you’re looking for more creative video marketing ideas, check out this page for additional information.

What Are the Benefits of Video Marketing?

So now that you know what video marketing is, it’s time to answer the most important question. What are the benefits? How can video marketing help my business?

Here are just a few of the benefits of video marketing for business.

Improves Your Google Ranking

Google loves when websites have video content. Videos keep viewers on your site longer, which shows Google that your site has something positive to offer people.

By including video on your website, you’ll be much more likely to rank on the front page of Google than sites in your niche without video content. 

Boosts Web Traffic and Sales

Because your Google ranking will improve, you’ll increase the traffic for your site. And increased traffic, especially when it’s being done by interested consumers, leads to sales. 

Appeals to Mobile Users

Mobile users love watching video content instead of straining their eyes to read written content. Nearly 60 percent of searches are done on mobile, so it’s important to appeal to those mobile users by having video content available.

Engages More People 

Some people cannot focus on a piece of written content for more than a few seconds. They rely on video information instead of written info. If you aren’t making quality video content, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of the consumer pool.

By using video marketing, you can attract all of the people who don’t have the patience, time, or focus to read a long blog on your website. 

Start Using Video Marketing Today!

Now that you know the answer to “What is video marketing”, it’s time to say “action”! You will quickly begin to reap the rewards that video marketing has to offer.

Looking for more digital marketing tips to boost web traffic on your site? Check out our blog today!

Marketing Done Right: 7 Tips to Make the Best Marketing Video

Trying to build your brand’s online presence?

Looking for a new way to promote your products on the web?

While there are many types of content marketing you can use to grow your business, video marketing is one of the best of the bunch. Videos are one of the most preferred types of content on the web these days and video content often gets shared more than other types.

Because of this, creating compelling marketing videos that will connect with your customers and strengthen your brand image is essential.

Luckily, we’re here to help. Below we’ll give you our 7 top tips for making a marketing video that will get your business new customers.

1. Provide Value

The first thing you’ll want to do when planning your marketing video is to make sure that you have an engaging concept or story that truly provides value to your audience. Video content should be educational, interesting, or informative, and should help your ideal customer with a problem that they have.

Doing some research beforehand is essential. Make sure that you identify what pain points your customers have and look for ways to solve their problems by providing them with more information. This will allow you to create value and engage your customers more easily with your video.

Additionally, make sure that you avoid being overly promotional in your video. Even if you have a product to promote with your video, make sure that you’re aiming to provide value first and foremost.

2. Keep It Short

These days, most customers online have very short attention spans and have no patience for a video that doesn’t get to the point quickly. Make sure that your video has a short length and moves fast to tell a customer the most important information that they need to know. 

Short videos of about a minute are actually ideal and will ensure that your video’s bounce rate isn’t too high. It’s also a lot easier to create a short video than a long one, so this works out great for you as well.

Great editing and a clearly defined goal are the keys to making sure your video moves fast enough to keep your customers engaged.

3. Let Your Brand’s Personality Shine

In the days of social media, it’s crucial that you let your personality shine during a video. Think about your brand carefully and consider how you would like to express your brand’s image.

A marketing video isn’t a corporate training video but instead is a video that is aimed at customers. They want to see your brand’s personality and feel like they know the people behind the business in a more personal way. 

If anyone speaks in your video, make sure that they have a warm and charismatic personality that is able to build interest and excitement using their voice. While you may choose to use an employee for the video, you may also want to hire a professional voice artist to narrate your videos. You can get more info here about how you can do this for your video.

Additionally, remember to be consistent across multiple marketing videos. If your tone is very different for each video it may throw customers off and confuse them.

4. Optimize Your Video

In addition to the content of the video itself, you’ll also want to do some things to improve the technical side of your video and to improve video SEO. Just like with blog posts and your website, you can optimize your video to make sure it’s found easily by searchers.

On YouTube, for example, one of the ways to do this is to add a transcript to the description of your video. You’ll also want to use tags and a strong title that attracts customers and entices them to click on it.

Within your video, it’s also a good idea to make an overlay call-to-action that will help customers know what next steps to take to engage with your business online.

5. Share It Everywhere

Once you’ve created your video, you’re going to want to share it far and wide. The more places you put your video on the web, the more chances you’ll have for getting views, and subsequently, customers. Your video marketing campaign should seamlessly tie into your social media accounts to generate buzz and get new customers.

People probably won’t just find your video on their own, so it’s essential that you post it to all of your social media profiles including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and any other social platforms that you use. You’ll also want to share it on your blog and website.

Remember that creating the marketing video is only half of the battle. The more shares you get for your video the more useful it will be.

6. Analyze Your Results

After your video has been released and you’ve attempted to engage your customers with it, don’t forget to analyze the results of your campaign. Look at all of the data that you can on the video to find out if it succeeded and if you should have done anything differently.

Determining the view count as well as the bounce rate of your video can be helpful in determining how engaging your video was. Comments, likes, and other types of feedback on your videos can also give you a lot of insight and can help you better understand what type of videos your customers connect with the most.

7. Try Different Formats

In addition to creating standard video content, you’ll want to try using some other video formats from time to time as well to discover what engages your customers the most.

These days, there are several options for making a video more interactive and that may be able to engage your audience more effectively. You may want to try your hand at live streaming videos and webinars or experiment with VR and 360-degree videos.

You never know what might be a hit with your customers, so make sure you keep experimenting with your videos to discover what they like. Try to create more interactivity with your video content whenever possible.

Getting the Best Results from Your Marketing Video

While there’s a lot more to think about when creating a successful marketing video, incorporating the above tips into your strategy is a great start to making your video campaign a big success. Make sure you consider the above points carefully if you want to have success with your videos online.

Looking for ways to improve your social media marketing strategy? Click here to see our top tips for perfecting your social media marketing efforts.

Popping on Camera: 5 Awesome Video Tips for Real Estate Marketing

Are you looking for new ways to spread the word about your real estate business?

Whether your real estate business is brand new or has been around for years, video marketing can help you expand your reach and bring in all kinds of new buyers and sellers.

Even if you’ve never made a video before in your life, you can benefit from video marketing.

Read on for some tips that will help you get the hang of using video for real estate marketing.

Benefits of Video for Real Estate Marketing

What makes video marketing so special? 

There are lots of reasons why real estate companies like Westbrook REI are turning to video marketing, including the following:

• You can showcase houses in a new and interesting way
• You can bring in new clients who might not be interested in reading content online
• You can enhance your click-through and open rates
• You can improve your online search engine rankings

Video can also help you to build trust with your audience and foster deeper connections.

Top Five Video Tips

As you can see, there are lots of reasons to use video as part of your real estate marketing efforts. If you’re new to the world of video, start by giving these tips a try:

1. Focus on Video Quality

When you’re putting together marketing videos, quality is key. Invest in some high-quality recording equipment so you can put out clear videos with great audio. You might even want to hire a part-time videographer to do the actual filming for you.

2. Plan Your Videos Ahead of Time

A good video marketing strategy takes some planning. If you want to have quality content to put out on a regular basis, you need to plan ahead. Take time to think about the types of videos you want to make and when you want to post them.

3. Tell a Story

It helps to get personal in your videos. Sure, you could post video tours of the houses you sell and leave it at that. If people feel a connection with you, personally, though, they’re going to be more inclined to think of your business when they’re buying or selling a house.

4. Use Testimonials

Testimonials are a powerful tool on their own, and video testimonials take things up a notch. Record short videos of your satisfied clients and display on your website and social media profiles.

5. Keep Your Videos Short

Finally, make sure your videos are kept short. Most video experts find that a video that lasts 2-3 minutes is optimal for holding people’s attention and getting your main points across. 

Looking for More Marketing Advice?

Keep these tips in mind and you’ll soon be an expert at using video for real estate marketing.

Are you interested in learning more marketing tips and tricks? If so, we have tons of articles that will teach you everything you need to know about promoting your business, both online and in person.

Start by checking out this article on real estate blog ideas. It’ll help you bust through writer’s block and start appealing to your audience in a brand new way!