Where is video going?
The online video space is heating up. Companies are scrambling to stay one step ahead of each other. New video networks — some copying YouTube, others pioneering new ways to combine revenue sharing and advertising — are popping up all over the place. The blogosphere is buzzing over Google’s purchase of YouTube and subsequent “make-nice” efforts to allay the fears that YouTube was going to be vanquished in a sea of copyright litigation.
So what is going to work?
The YouTube model (C2C – consumer to consumer)
YouTube works for the masses and is the clear leader in that space. There is plenty to watch. Uploading is easy and the interface is familiar to most.
How do you monetize it? Well, they already are. Advertising is placed all around the site. It is not much different than what ESPN does with its online properties. They have content, they share it and then they advertise around it. ESPN even offers premium subscriptions for premium content (something that might work in the video world someday). The talk of placing adverts inside videos doesn’t seem real, and hasn’t happened yet mainly it won’t work (read: people will stop watching). What will be interesting is to see whether “joe-video-uploader-at-youtube” will ever get a cut of the action, Revver-style.
The Other model (B2C, B2B)
Enter the Brightcoves of the world. A different animal. One that provides an easy way for businesses to get their content out there in a customized and branded player. This allows a company that has some video content to easily make it available. Brightcove also has built-in ways to monetize the videos w/ banners that wrap into the player widget, and inline adverts that can be placed pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll. That part really isn’t going to work, as people have been pre-conditioned by YouTube not to be interrupted while viewing short videos online.
The B2C space is really heating up. Brightcove has been joined by a few others recently with offerings aimed at businesses. It shouldn’t be too long before Google repositions Google Video to do the same.
