Video: “online” or TV, who cares?
Having just been to WPP’s Stream 09, and spoken at CTAM’s Eurosummit last month, I’ve been exposed a fair bit to a topic that affects both the cable (TV) and online industries fairly equally: video. And, more importantly, how to monetize it.
YouTube generates billions of hours of viewing, and still are struggling to break even. I’ve talked to people at YouTube, and clients of YouTube, and the frustration is the same: no clear way of applying advertising to the medium that both brings benefit to the brand, and to the user.
My 2cents worth on that a bit further down, but before that, something that just jumps out at me: Video is video is video! There will be (at latest within 2-3 years) no distinction between online, digital TV, cable. If (as someone else at Stream pointed out) I want to watch Family Guy, that means I want to watch Family guy. What screen it’s on, what size that screen is, and what the platform is called doesn’t matter to me one bit. What matters is watching the show – and soon (by which I mean very soon) I’ll have a set-top box under my TV that is “online”, no different from the box under my ‘lean-forward’ PC screen. Forget the puny attempts by Panasonic et al to put some widgets onto a TV screen. I mean full online access, with some optimisation to compensate for sitting 8ft away.
What am I participating in then? Online video? Video on Demand? Digital TV?
No, just video. So there is no “online or TV” debate, to my mind. There’s “video”, that’s it.
Back to monetization: I did make the point to the YouTube guys that Google hasn’t yet done what it did so smartly with search. There, it turned advertising into a user benefit (GoogleAds are of course frequently more relevant/useful than the organic results and generate up to perhaps 40% response from the audience). And the format matches the context (short text snippet search results).
With YouTube, Google seems to be forgetting its drive to innovate, and just wanting to copy TV advertising (pre-roll, post-roll and so on), or slap something up (annoying overlays). The debate seems to be about how to annoy users least (by only pre-rolling, keeping the ads short and so no) rather than how to help users the most. Helping users the most to my mind will help brand advertisers the most.
What’s really needed (especially in short form video, long form can probably carry TV-style advertising for a while) is a new, game-changing way of monetizing the content. I spoke to quite a few people at Stream about this, and I’ll bet something will emerge soon. As a thought-starter I regularly mention Net-a-porter (and have talked to Mark Sebba the Chief Executive recently about this and other things) as a great, simple example of smart monetization of content. In their case, it’s like having a copy of Vogue magazine where women can click on the clothes on the models, and buy them immediately.
Perhaps there’s something in that approach for brand advertisers and video?
