Wednesday, September 27, 2006

User Videos Need to Be Profitable

The number of people watching user-generated videos is staggering, but what's more amazing is the slowness with which companies are capitalizing on it.

Accord to Comscore MediaMetrix, nearly 60 percent of all U.S. internet users watched a video stream in July. MySpace had 20 percent of the action, with 1.5 billion streams served, and Yahoo and YouTube generated the second and third most video streams.

The companies are slowly introducing ads, such as YouTube promoting new movies, but they need to get a comprehensive advertising plan in place. One pre-roll ad per five videos watched is acceptable, but more importantly, they should also create a compensation plan for those who are creating videos.

Contests that pay cash for the most-watched videos will increase participation, or failing that, they could offer merchandise from advertising partners as bonuses for milestones for viewership. For example, if 10,000 people watch your video, you get 50 percent off coupon for buying something from Gap.com, and for 50,000, you can download an album for free from Napster. These incentives would cause the content creates to virally market there videos to get the awards.

The TV networks have been slow to cash in too. TBS is joining the user-generated content crowd with its own micro-site to be called "Funny or Not?" The network will be promoting the community, which users software from "social marketing" company ViTrue. They are one step ahead of ABC, which amazingly has not created a video upload site for its America's Funniest Home Video program, the show that sparked interested in user-generated videos.

Posted By John Gartner at 01:21 PM
Permanent Link: User Videos Need to Be Profitable | Comments (2)

(2) Comments on User Videos Need to Be Profitable

I'm also amazed at the slowness to adopt a model that compensates user-generated videos.

It seems to be so simple to see, that one wonders what's holding it back.

Your idea about incentives to make them go viral is also a good one. What better way for a company to cash in than to pay someone and then have that same person basically do a lot of the marketing for them?

Comments by Gary Bourgeault (thealphamarketer.com) : Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 06:22 PM

Sites like this already exist such as Revver. They include an add at the end of each video and the user gets 50% of the revenue from people clicking the add.

They also offer an affiliate program - it is inevitable that YouTube will eventually offer a smiliar type of feature.

Comments by Jez : Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 11:29 PM

Post a Comment

Name:
Email:
WebSite:
Comment:
Remember Me
Subscribe