November 27th, 2006
Is The Video Content Business Eating Itself Alive?
Last week the big news was CBS and YouTube crowing that distributing video clips of CBS TV shows through YouTube was (ostensibly) increasing CBS broadcast TV ratings. Today, the big news is that UK viewers who watch online video are watching lest broadcast TV.
The online video boom is starting to eat into TV viewing time, an ICM survey of 2,070 people for the BBC suggests. Some 43% of Britons who watch video from the internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result.
So will online video save the broadcast TV business or kill it? Perhaps the better question is — will the video content business come out on the other end of this transformation greater or more diminished? Will loss of control over distribution mean loss of control over monetization? If consumers won’t tolerate pre-roll ads, and if the success of YouTube is driven by embedding the player in other sites, i.e. no control over the surrounding real estate, will new modes of monetization be nearly as profitable as old modes?
Google and every media company on the planet are racing to figure out the video conundrum. The MIT Ad Lab blog had an interesting suggestion — just embed the ad in the viewing screen:
But isn’t this the same overbearing approach that made people hate ads in the first place?
Maybe the real question is whether innovations in advertising and other monetization models can prevent the video content business from eating itself alive.
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One way to embed advertising in a Flash video is to create dynamic hotspots using a Flash layer that sits on top of the video content.
A company called United Virtualities used this technique to good effect; I’m surprised it hasn’t caught on more. See their demo of video hotspotting (which they call Schosmosis, but there’s nothing proprietary in the technique):
I think the video industry is in a trasformation - it is going online. Separating the offline and online companent is half the story.
Scott,
I always enjoy your blog posts. You have a refreshingly unique industry insight. As for myself, I create media-enabling technology. As such, I take a technologist’s viewpoint to your bloggings, and leverage the gap to my advantage, where possible.
As you may know, it takes a keen insight into state-of-the-art technology to understand what is economically possible. Many people do not know this. Many people (particularly lawyers and business folk) don’t know how to capitalize on today’s copyrighted digital universe.
They will only learn when they are taught. And their best teachers are experience. And what gives them experience is technology.
And what drives technology is innovation.
$5 off special offer for subscriptions to a print magazine called “JPGâ€
“What the offer means”
Well… except we can conclude that TV viewing will continue to erode, and that some ‘Golden Age’ of Internet video is right around the corner. Scott Karp wonders about business models, but perhaps it is too early for that: [from Is The Content Business Eating Itself Alive?] So will online video save the broadcast TV business or kill it? Perhaps the better question is — will the video content business come out on the other end of this transformation greater or more diminished? Will loss of control over distribution
[IMG] Is The Video Content Business Eating Itself Alive?
I was directed to this post from the MIT Ad Lab via Publishing 2.0. The Ad Lab suggests a different way to look at advertising on YouTube, namely this: [IMG ]Embedded ads. My response is… duh. Anyone who’s in the television business knows that embedded advertising works without seriously eroding the user
Publishing 2.0. The Ad Lab suggests a different way to look at advertising on YouTube, namely this: [IMG ]Embedded ads. My response is… duh. Anyone who’s in the television business knows that embedded advertising works without seriously eroding the user
the Internet and the computer are increasingly becoming one thing. George Nimeh has some worthwhile thoughts on the subject too, and my friend Scott Karp from Publishing 2.0 wonders whether all this evolution is really just the video content business eating itself alive. Ian Delaney at TwoPointOuch has also written about it. Comments Tag: TV, Video, Internet Add to [IMG] Del.icio.us | [IMG] Digg | [IMG] Yahoo! My Web | [IMG] Furl Bookmark WebProNews: [IMG]
[...] I was directed to this post from the MIT Ad Lab via Publishing 2.0. The Ad Lab suggests a different way to look at advertising on YouTube, namely this: [...]
Well… Google is not a media company, neither a search company anymore. They moved to the advertising business. The acquisition of youtube is due to the traffic it generated making more opportunities for ads exposure.
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Is The Video Content Business Eating Itself Alive?
[...] was directed to this post from the MIT Ad Lab via Publishing 2.0. The Ad Lab suggests a different way to look at advertising on YouTube, namely [...]
There’s a lot of talk about “Monitizing” video advertising and little about benefits to company’s out there who can now get more bang for their buck on the Interent.
Television advertising is expensive and has been cost prohibitive for many of the 25 million small businesses out there in the U.S. So the Fortune 2000 companies have been really brininging in the bread all these years on TV (along with about 15,000 other companies)
Enter a new dimension of advertising that provides afforable solutions, better targeting, mobility and broader reach and you have an advertising shift that creates endless opporuntites for the small guy–(SBC says the “small company” is defined in the U.S. as having 500 or less employees). How much of that market do we think television has granered and how much do we think the Internet will garner in the future. I think the numbers and the opporuntites are staggering for video advertising on the Net.
YouTube paved the way for companies like http://www.hotpluto.com to provide sensible, targeted and far reaching solutions for the millions of small companies out there.
Monitize the process via pre-roll and CPC or CPM banner advertising styles and you could see a slow gathering and placement on the Net. If you want a million impressions a month–depending on the “keywords” you could be looking at monthly budgets for advertising similar to television. Create lower fixed monthly options for company’s and you open the door to volume for the Advertising market but more important–opporuntites for the small guy where there were few.