Video, opined the late seventies new wave band The Buggles, killed the radio star. Some think it will also do for television, at least in its current guise. Indeed, the new government is already making noises about extending the licence fee to people who watch programmes online, such are the fears that the era in which millions of British citizens all watched the same programmes at the same time via a big screen in the corner of the living room may not be long for this world.
Advertisers welcome this trend. A cynic might say it’s because they resent the historical pricing power of ITV and Channel 4; but this has been on the wane for some time, due to the growth of Sky and consumer migration towards Freeview, Freesat and Virgin Media in preparation for the 2012 analogue switch-down. Truth is, agencies and marketers love online video because it is a narrowcast, as opposed to broadcast, medium. This means that there is no wastage: everyone who watches a video clip or programme online is choosing to do so. In contrast, taking the hypothetical example of a family viewing an episode of Gok’s Fashion Fix, an advertiser such as the brand manager of Oil of Olay wants to reach style-conscious thirtysomething Helen, but are as disinterested in her husband John as he is in the advice doled out by the eponymous Mr Wan.
In principle, magazine publishers ought to be good at online video: we own brands that target people who share a given lifestyle, pastime or profession and we’re skilled in providing content that is credible and engaging for such audiences. But can we produce good video content? And, crucially, can we make money from it? Follow my six simple tips and you shouldn’t go far wrong.
1. Ask yourself: will it work?
Some subjects lend themselves better than others to video. I wouldn’t want to produce a channel for Hachette’s self-improvement title, Psychologies, for instance, because I can’t see how the magazine would translate into anything other than a series of talking head clips, which seldom make scintillating viewing. In contrast, FHM’s High Street Honeys would be a slam dunk.
Sometimes obstacles other than the subject matter could make it hard for a print brand to move into online video. One day, I believe that farming would make a great channel; but today, I think a strong brand such as Farmers Weekly would struggle to launch one, because their readers live in rural areas and many don’t yet have broadband, which is a prerequisite for satisfactory video viewing.
2. Consider where clips will come from
There are five main sources of video footage, and you have to be certain that you can source good, or good enough, clips, of the sort your users will want to watch – and advertisers support – on a cost-effective basis.
The first, which we can largely disregard, is broadcast: this is where, for instance, BBC iPlayer sources its content. The second is the public. Known in the trade as User-Generated Content (UGC), it is the mainstay on which YouTube was launched, though in fact much of its traffic is now generated by broadcasters’, publishers’ and brand owners’ clips. UGC has a great advantage: it’s free. However it suffers drawbacks, not least that it can be of poor quality, the site owner has little control over it, and for these reasons, advertisers are wary of being associated with it.
Option three is to create your own content. In the main, this is expensive. A 10-minute sequence in a terrestrial TV programme such as Top Gear can take several hundred person-hours to create. And while there are many who might argue that this is excessive, and certainly nothing like so much time need be expended in producing an item of that length for the internet, the costs of running a standalone video team could be considerable.
In some markets, credible videos must be produced in studios – think cookery, for instance. In others, such as car tests, they must be shot in the field. The latter involves lower set-up costs, as it avoids the need for a set and specialised lighting; but unless the publisher also has a team on site, researching an article and taking photographs, the incremental cost of producing each video could be higher.
The fourth option is syndication: paying to re-use existing material that has been created for another purpose. Sometimes, this can be done on a revenue-share basis, without the need for upfront payments. This can be an attractive option for publishers looking for a low-cost way into video, provided there are suitable sources of available content.
Finally, some PR agencies and brand owners have videos that they’re willing to give site owners in order to spread their commercial messages; in some cases, they will also make a small payment every time a clip is played. This source of footage has an obvious flaw: will visitors trust what is obviously sponsored content, and will advertisers spend money to appear around rivals’ messages?
3. Think small
TVs are getting bigger: when I was a child, my parents were proud to rent a 22in colour set; today, 42in is becoming the norm. Not only are computer screens much smaller, but they’re shrinking: the desktop with a 17in CRT monitor has given way to laptops with 13- and 15-in screens; these are now yielding to 10-12in netbooks, which in turn could give way to iPads and other readers with still smaller screens.
Of course, a computer sits a lot closer to its user than TVs to their viewers, but it’s also true to say that most player windows cover a small proportion of the real estate of a web browser on screen. So aim to serve up videos that show big, bright things moving rapidly across the frame, rather than subtle details that barely change and would lose most people’s attention unless viewed on a big plasma set: think Formula 1 motorsport, not political interviews.
Likewise, bear in mind that many people view online videos at work, or while passively viewing the television. In both cases, chances are the sound will be off. So it’s better to show things than describe them.
4. Be sure of your business model
Where will the money come from? I can think of no less than ten revenue streams for online video channels:
* Agency pre-roll ads. ‘Pre-roll’ is the industry term for a 15- to 20-second video ad that runs before an editorial clip. To generate this type of advertising, you need a lot of traffic: 100,000 monthly unique users is often held to be the threshold for getting an agency to sell such advertising for you, and perhaps ten times this number to be able to go direct to the big brands’ media planners.
* Direct pre-roll ads. Specialist sites may be able to sell pre-roll opportunities direct to in-market clients, typically SMEs that don’t buy via agencies. However, many don’t have suitable ads, which are often slightly shortened versions of TV campaigns, which brings us to...
* Making ads. Niche businesses in vertical markets may have generous marketing budgets but don’t use TV because it’s insufficiently targeted; they may want to use a web TV channel targeting their potential customers, but lack video ads. So why not offer to produce them? Ten Alps, to name just one company, owns a company devoted to doing precisely this.
* Syndication. Take a brand owner’s promotional video, play it on your site, get paid by the brand owner. Do deals with other, higher-traffic sites to do the same, on a revenue share basis.
* E-commerce. Your own home shopping channel, online. Produce videos offering products for sale, either as in-house pre-rolls or as stand-alone infomercials; surround them with prominent links to a shop facility. You’d be surprised how much more likely consumers are to buy a product when they’ve seen a video of it, compared with a static image: between four and six times, in my experience.
* Affiliates. As above but your company doesn’t own the products. A good example would be a review-based video site testing products, surrounded by links offering opportunities to buy them from third-party retailers, who pay you commission on sales.
* Subscription. Some people believe that consumers can be persuaded to pay subscription fees to view videos online. I have yet to see any evidence that they’re right, though there are some B2B sites that work on this basis – for instance, charging annual fees to deliver professional training videos.
* Pay per view. In October 2009, almost half a million people viewed the England vs Ukraine World Cup qualifier online, with individual users paying a one-up fee of £4.99. There are also B2B sites that levy one-off fees to watch speeches made at conferences, at a price that is cheaper than the cost of attending and travelling to the event.
* Sponsorship. A brand owner gains visibility around a video, channel or site, in return for a fee. Great if you can do it without alienating other clients and commercial partners or undermining editorial integrity.
* Branding. The site isn’t intended to generate revenue directly but, rather, to strengthen your own brand and generate traffic that you monetise in other ways. Setting a sprat to catch a mackerel, in effect.
5. Choose the right platform
If you don’t want to run pre-roll advertising, never overlook the cheapest option: host your videos on YouTube and embed its free player on your site. That way, you won’t cop for any hosting and bandwidth charges. But bear in mind that some people will be seeing your videos in an environment in which you can’t monetise them.
The technology needed to manage videos within an existing site and content management system, and integrate with third-party video ad servers, is within the capabilities of many web developers, so if you have your own team and have developed a bespoke CMS or customised an existing one, you may choose the in-house option.
However, most publishers partner with a commercial provider such as Brightcove and Kit, low-cost competitor VidZapper or the open source Kaltura. All have their pros and cons, so seek expert advice. And ensure your platform choice is future-proof: with Apple having publicly set its face against Flash-based players, platform providers that talk of migrating to HTML5 rather than defending Flash are likely to have longer lifespans.
6. Think through your marketing
There’s a crucial difference between video and text-based sites: almost nobody carries out Google searches specifically for videos. So, unless you build your site and populate it with text that enables people to find your videos as a result of text-based searches, you won’t get much traffic from Google.
That said, many people graze video aggregators such as YouTube and the how-to site VideoJug, and many owners of vertical sites produce content or branded channels on these sites, with links, as promotional tools; the traffic generated can be considerable.
For consumer sites, there can also be mileage in approaching portals such as MSN and Yahoo to syndicate your clips. They’re eager for more video content and a share of the pre-roll plays generated from their users; you get the remainder of the revenue for those plays and free branding and traffic. This same principle can be extended to a wide range of other sites, including any competitors that may take the view that it’s better to run your content for a share of the income than choose between sacrificing that revenue and traffic entirely or doing it themselves.
