I went along to an NMALive event, How to make money from Online Video last week. There was a lot of info to take in, but I’ve tried to summarise a few points below and there’s some links to download presentations.
Ian Maude, Enders Analysis
*Main TV set use is growing due to investment in PVR, HD and home cinema. Second set use is declining as kids switch to laptops.
*VOD is still a small proportion of the TV audience, gradual rather than explosive growth
*VOD use estimated to rise to 30% by 2013 as a result of Sky VOD, Canvas and similar
* Average video streamer spends 20 minutes/day
Bruce Daisley, YouTube (see slides here)
*Showed this clip to demonstrate there were thousands of video uploads to YouTube on SnowDay 2009 and they were far more happy than all the miserable stories of woe in British media (and (excuse the pun) the clip froze a couple of times whilst playing).
*FMCG goods are biggest category in terms of online video display ads
*Video ads break down into: homepage formats, pre-roll video, promoted video
*Showed Evian baby ad. Apparently this was never shown on TV. (I think this ad’s a bit weird but maybe that’s just me)!
*Brand manager for Evian said they expected about 2 million hits and got 58 million+
*It’s a departure from classic ads. People chose to watch it- and clicked for more
*Samsung have exploited trend of geeky ‘unboxing’ demo videos (yawn) and made this rather funny spoof video
*Samsung also made another funny video involving LED sheep (see our friends at The Viral Factory for more of this type of caper)
*The point about successful videos is that they have the ‘how did they do that?’ factor
Trevor Diamond, Arsenal Broadband
*People got bored watching stings so they took them off the front of vids and improved retention
*They are interested in trying out one-off pay-to-view but it’s difficult because there isn’t a ubiquitous and simple payment method – but they will experiment and see what works
*Huge demand in China but no way of users paying
*Looking at Multilingual CMS
*Apart from matches, viewers are most interested in background stories on players
*Adapative bit rate is important to reach the widest audience
Am I any the wiser about making money from online video? Well apart from the old models of being creative enough to come up with a very good idea for a funny video, getting subscriptions from eager sports fans, or selling ad space, er.. no. But it was fun.
Sara thanks for sharing the info from the “How to make money online” seminar. I agree that many articles and seminars on this topic don’t actually tell you how to make money online, they simply talk around the subject. Have you found any interesting articles or workshops that do provide concrete details on how to monetize video, if so can you share links to the information?
Thanks
Hi Denise
I’ll let you know if I hear about any events. Are you based in the UK or elsewhere?
To put across my personal opinion, I think the main thing we should be thinking about in terms of making money from any online business is (perhaps) to take a step back and think first about a strong and diverse business model that has multiple revenue streams – and it built on quality, a clear proposition and strong foundations. For example a lot of clients say they want to build a site like TED – but TED is a success because a) it’s specialist b) it has original, well-produced content and c) the online success has developed from a ‘real-life’ event so there was something to build on.
Also might be of interest in terms of B2B: Some publishers we work with have been experimenting quite successfully with creating branded or sponsored content, which is an obvious and straightforward enough way of making money. Instead of selling a big software company a full-colour ad as they would have done 10 years ago, their proposition is to create a series of videos on industry topics and position their own thought leaders alongside others to create a growing archive of video based expertise and so on.
In terms of B2C I think there are lots of opportunities but again it comes down to what game you are in and what resources you have in the first place. Video pre-roll ads, affiliate schemes, links to e-commerce and so on.
I may be stating the obvious here – but anyway food for thought.
Keep in touch
Sarah