Its interesting. Im not convinced that social networking sites like facebook or phenomenon such as twitter know how to make money, let alone video providers with their higher bandwidth costs.
There were a flurry of articles in recent weeks suggesting that Youtube is trying to get away from user generated content, and do more deals with the likes of Disney. They would still have user generated content, as a loss-leader that brings eyeballs to the site, but would be using the premium stuff to try to generate the big revenues. I half expected some concern about this from this group, especially as the already limited ability of individuals to promote themselves effectively via youtube & friends could be further eroded. Ive little idea where its all going, I certainly worry about sustainability issues, bandwidth/hosting energy costs, lack of revenue, and Ive always been very skeptical of the silly numbers that used to get bandied around regarding potential advertising revenues. How have text bloggers and blog networks been faring in recent years? And podcasts for that matter. Ive forgotten which visionaries used to talk big about the longtail in years gone by, I wonder what they think now, can anybody point me in the right direction? I think I used to wonder whether this whole process would lead to the death of the ability to make silly money from media, even going as far as to think that most people will make stuff for the love of it in future, and do some other work to pay the bills etc. On the other hand I never thought that online music would utterly destroy the music industry, its changed it somewhat and maybe changed their revenues a bit, but they seem to have worked out how to use it for promotion and distribution without totally strangling themselves. The economies of scale are in a mess, unclear whether the wider economic woes of our age will mean we never get to see the 'natural conclusion' to this dramatic change, before the whole model of capital and borrowing against the future is wiped out by the realisation that we've borrowed against a future that will never exist. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert <rup...@...> wrote: > > That's me - broad brush man. Jack of all trades, master of none. I > take your point, that it's horses for courses, but I still don't > understand the long term future of advertising for on-demand video. > It's just not happening on anything like the scale of traditional > advertising, or even other online advertising. Surely it's different > from text - not least in advertisers' ability to keep track of what > content they're being connected to and the costs of providing it? And > I don't understand > > > ads don't work with ephemeral content. > > Surely that's exactly where they do work? Most of the media we > consume is ephemeral - TV, newspapers, online news, we see adverts > alongside those things as they stream into our lives. On-demand > video is largely different from that, isn't it? it's short and self- > contained and chosen individually and unlike TV and news, it's not > time-sensitive - it's actually less ephemeral. > > But most of it - 97% apparently - is unmonetizable with advertising, > because individual videos' viewing figures are too low - and maybe > it's all too fragmented and uncategorizable, and perhaps advertisers > are not prepared to see their adverts up against every little home > video and copyright-infringing clip. Even if those things eventually > collectively gather millions of views and last for a lot longer than > most ephemeral advertising-funded media. > > According to Credit Suisse, YouTube seems to be making $50-100m from > ads in videos, adjacent banners and sponsored videos. That's as good > as they can do all year, and they have 40% of the total online video > market worldwide, at a time when online video is booming? > > Sure, online viewership is tiny compared to TV, but the gap between TV > and online video advertising seems to be disproportionately large. > Especially when you'd imagine that online video would provide greater > opportunities for more targeted "addressable" advertising, supposedly > the holy grail. > > But the TV ad industry in the US alone is worth $80 billion, 60% of > total advertising spend. Superbowl ads this year earned NBC over > $200m - that alone is perhaps between 2 and 4 times as much as > Google's making all year from YouTube video ads. > > Is online video really that unattractive to advertisers? How is that > going to change? It seems to me that at the moment, short on-demand > online videos are more attractive to the viewers than the advertisers, > and therefore that viewers are likely to pay more for them directly > than advertisers would. > > At the moment, they don't have to make the choice, because 40% of the > market is being subsidized by Google at a cost of $500m. No other > business could sustain that kind of loss. That's what I mean about it > distorting the market. And if that subsidy disappeared tomorrow, > surely something would have to pay for the huge costs of bandwidth and > content in delivering all this video to people? Will that be > advertising? Or pay per view? Judging by the stats so far, my money > would be on pay per view, not advertising. > > But again, that's just a broad personal impression from very little > knowledge or experience. I am just a layman. > > Rupert >
