As online video producers experiment, fumble, and tinker their way toward a model for making money on scripted online video content, an old school premise emerges on the new media scene: product placement.
It makes sense. Because online video needs to be able to be seen where there’s audience (see: YouTube), advertising that is already “baked in” to the video content itself can help producers to monetize their product.
Fred Seibert, creative director of NextNewNetworks, talks about creating programming around “community need” and then finding a way for video content and sponsorship to crossover to meet that need. Interesting stuff.
(Found via Beet.tv.)
Online video advertising is still, relatively speaking, a brand new industry. People only started watching videos on a massive scale over the last three or four years, as broadband penetration peaked and video platforms like YouTube emerged for non-technical people to easily upload and publish video to the Internet. And it’s only in the last year or two that online video advertising has emerged.
Much like for the Internet itself, the idea of advertising for online video was strange at first. But over time, people are getting used to the idea, and depending on the quality of the content, will put up with it in certain forms. Further, if the advertising is contextually relevant and/or blended effectively with the content itself, audiences might actually enjoy it.
Here’s what we know: people are online, they watch video online, they spend money online. Therefore, video producers and advertisers are going into overdrive to figure out a model that works. And as this marketplace matures, we’re going to see higher quality video content online and advertising models emerge that make money for producers.
There are probably many people who will disagree with that last statement, by the way. It’s conventional wisdom in some circles that you can’t make money online from scripted video content. I disagree. It’s simply a matter of time and experimentation.
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