Used Generated content (Video sharing) vs. Professional Video Content

The latest issue of Television Week's (Dec 17) article discusses cross promotion among video sharing sites. Veoh , Revision3, Next New Networks and blip.tv are quoted as successful examples to build traffic from one another. This is a phenomenon discussed in the Webcasting Worldwide Book about the different business models of content aggregators and a media brand site. Most video-sharing sites are content aggregators to maximize reach of audience and they don't have offline media counterparts to support them. The way they can succeed is to draw audiences from everywhere and provide with as diversified as possible the content for one-stop viewing. Surfers are who they will get as audiences. Branded media sites have their own unique content and already capture some followers from their offline media counterparts. An article I wrote four years ago in Journal of Interactive Advertising discusses the two different strategies employed by media companies in providing their services online: Brand integration and brand extension. Although most of the TV web sites are still supportive as brand integration, more and more TV web sites evolve as self-sufficient online video sites.

Webcast turned local

Our department's alumnus, Mr. Mark Geyman, President of Ohio Biz Web Consulting, visiting our campus last Friday durinig the homecoming weekend. He spoke to a class and showed his web page that compiles all Ohio webstreaming services at http://www.ohiobiz.com/Ohioradiofeeds.htm. You will be impressed how prevalent is the use of Webcasting by local media. We should be grateful to the many people like Mark who devotes time to compile and aggregate content for us consumers. I hope more people will know about this service.

With its huge capacity, there are two directions that the Web can go: Being more local and being more global. Both depth and breadth should be examined for the future of Webcasting.

NBC new business model emphasize the multiple media platforms while curbing piracy

NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker announced the various viewing platforms for its audience. In today''s Broadcasting and Cable, he explained the multiple platforms the network is offering to its audience. For anyone who might miss Thursday night's debut of 30 Rock: A viewer can stream it free at NBC.com; download it free-of-charge and keep it for seven days, also at NBC.com; buy it at Amazon.com and keep it "forever"; watch it "on-demand" on some cable and satellite systems; watch it on a cell phone; "in a few weeks" time, stream it at Hulu.com, the new joint venture with News Corp.; or even buy the DVD at the end of the season. What this means is that Webcast is being instituted as a regular part of the TV network's channel for delivery and that Webcast will compete with other platforms for the alternative TV audience. The new business model is whenever and however you want to watch or own the TV program, the network will give you options. You pay for ownership and convenience.
He reiterated the concern for protecting the content property rights. What is then the advantage of putting it on the Web? The accessibility and interactivity are the key to success in webcasting. The multiple transmission options (on demand, download and live streaming) that NBCU adopted meet the Accessibility component of the ACR model in the Webcasting Worldwide book. The only option that NBCU has not explored is push.

Seoul newspaper rides on webcasting

The City, Seoul’s sixth free daily, has gone fully multi-media. Apart from the newspaper and the website, the City has formed a strategic alliance with webcaster Pandora TV (786,000 unique daily visitors) to enter online broadcasting and will be on TV screens in the Seoul Metro system. Read more on the Newspaper Innovation blog of our webcasting worldwide book Netherlands chapter contributor, Piet Bakker.

Online Video Once Again a NATPE Seminar Topic

Today I attended a webinar offered by the US National Association of Television Programming Executives (NATPE). This is the third time in a row that NATPE's webinars is about online video content and business models. This shows the anxiety and interest of traditional television producers and managers in webcast content. What were discussed today had been covered and discussed in the Webcasting Worldwide book: revenue sources in addition to advertising.

Speakers of the webinar are Sharon Martin from MSN, Chase Norlin from Pixsy, a video and image search engine and Douglas Cheney, producer of Prom Queen, an 80-episode series for the Web with each episode lasting only 90 seconds. Their three cases show the importance of utilizing the Web's participatory culture and interactive future to build audience loyalty. MSN showcased three types of webcast content and business models during the seminar. One is a live event and now on demand as well: Live Earth. The star-studded concert series with purposes of raising awareness of environment protection reported served 15 million viewers and 50 million streams and is the most watched webcast event. Although these figures may have been exaggerated, the most important take of this event is that 97% of the ad inventories were sold for the site. The second one is an original web show content called Big Debate where visitors vote on gossips and trivial issues such as whether the visitor prefer to have MacDonna or Angelina as the mom. The original shows did not cost much to produce (low-cost content strategy in the Webcasting Worldwide Book), but the returns can be big when the idea is innovative and get to the heart of the audience. User participation became the basis of audience loyalty. The third example is use of syndicated content: Arrested Development from the broadcast network. The web site built around loyal viewers and created a community of fans of the show with multiple platforms to support the content such as blogs, games and messenger.

Prom Queen uses multiple revenue sources to support its extremely short webisodes. For advertising revenue, it offers 3 second curtain ads and 15 second of pre or post roll ads. Product placements in the webisodes are also used to generate revenue. The compilation sales ($9.99 download deal) with Amazon.com Unbox is the third revenue source. As the Webcasting Worldwide book discusses, multiple revenue sources will be the norm in webcasting.

The use of metatags and keywords are the key to all kind of search. Pixsy is doing similar things as what Google Video is doing, but in a smaller scale. I would say most video search is very poor in yielding relevant results, partly because the video were not properly tagged for search engines and many also use misleading keywords. Seach engine must move beyond the text-based description to improve accuracy in video search.

Online videos are taking up 1/3 of the Internet traffic now and continues to grow with increasing broadband adoption. As Business Week's Spencer Ante predicts, they revived the telecom industry by utilizing the bandwidth capacities that broadband and fiber optic networks supposed to do. The Webcasting Worldwide book shows the importance in understanding the broadband industry to the webcasting industry. But broadband only provides the infrastructure, what content do webcasters offer can affect the viewership of online videos.

The future of webcasting depends on video-sharing sites?

MySpace, the largest social networking site renamed its video-sharing service to MySpace TV onJune 28 to compete directly with YouTube. MySpace has 110 million users a month and YouTube has 57.9 million users. These two big video-sharing sites' aggressive development in online video offerings raise the question of the importance of these sites video-sharing sites on the future of webcasting. To say the very least, the increasing popularity of video-sharing transformed webcasting from simply another platform for media professionals to a user-generated medium. It increases the consumption of webcast at least on user-generated content. The competition of professional content and user-generated content for webcast users attention will be an interesting phenonemon that further increase the consumption of webcasts.

Internet Radio Silence Day and Web Video Summit - A Tale of Two Types of Webcasters

This week two contrasting events both of significant meaning to the webcasting industry happened.

On one hand, today thousands of other U.S. webcasters, turned off their music streams and go silent for 24 hours June 26th to demonstrate the "silence" that Internet radio may be reduced to permanently after July 15th, the day on which 17 months' (Jan 1, 2006) worth of retroactive royalty payments set by the Copyright Royalty Board are due. If these new royalties are implemented, it threatens the survival of US Internet radio industry. The new fee structure would change the basis of the payments to a flat fee for each song streamed on a per-user basis. Thus, in 2007, every song sent to every listener would net SoundExchange, a royalty collection organization with ties to the RIAA, $0.0011, regardless of whether the broadcaster made any money by doing so. The fees are scheduled to more than double over the next five years. The Internet Radio Equality Act has recently been introduced in both the House and Senate to save the Internet radio industry.

On the other hand, Jupiter Media, The media research consulting company, will hold its web video summit June 27-28 in San Jose, California to showcase the bright prospect of creating and distributing web video with topics such as video search engines, mobile videos, etc. Interestingly, the copyright issue is not touched in the conference sessions.

While it's not unusual to see the battle between established media and new media, the new rule of the game is copyright and how government's attitudes and media suppliers toward copyright will affect the content available on the Web. There is also the difference bewteen video and radio webcasters, the latter are usually smaller and not backed up by deep pockets. The Webcasting Worldwide book has discussed the implication of copyright on the future industry and researchers and practitioners alike must create a paradigm of the real meaning of copyright and how it should be pursued in the digital age.

IAB's User Generated Content Conference video coverage in Ad Age

IAB posted an interesting question in its User-Generated Content Conference: How should advertisers use user-generated content? Use it as an ad medium or use it to generate advertising messages? Ad Age has a video report on it with coverage from speakers of the conference. As advertising will play a significant role to fuel the development of Webcasting and user-generated content is a main feature of many webcasters, webcasting researcher and business practitioners should learn more about a good use of user-generated content.

Disney-ABC online success expels the myth about cannibalization of online videos on offline viewing and feasibility of direct payment of TV shows

The June 2007 issue of Fast Company reported Disney's success with its online offering of TV shows. Disney was the first media company to sell TV episodes on iTunes in October 2005 at US$1.99 per episode. In summer 2006, ABC is the broadcast network that stream full episodes for free on its web site with advertising. Since offering downloads on iTunes, Disney-ABC earned US41,790,000 with 21 million downloads. Grey's Anatomy, the top-rated TV show of ABC, increased 4.4 million audience after the episodes became available on iTunes and abc.com even though it's the most streamed ABC TV show online. Such numbers show that the myth of digital platforms cannibalizing TV platforms is unsupported. People who watched the show online usually were to catch the show they missed and they were the young consumers, average age is 28, that advertisers treasured most. The article's author attributed this to the presence of Steve Jobs on the board of directors at Disney. The new windows/platforms for an ABC Family Cable Channel show, Kyle XY, premiered last year, began with 1) free promotional video download on iTunes a week prior to the airing, 2) airing of the show on cable, 3) a cameo of the show at ABC broadcast network, 4) full episodes sold online at US$1.99 on iTunes, 5) episodes of the show onVerizon FioTV as ABC Family on demand at $39.99 a month, 6) free streaming on ABC.com with three 30-second commercials, 7) DVD release at US$40 for the entire season just before the start of season 2. This strategy is maximizing the access of the content to the audience. Ownership of products costs the most to the consumer. Direct payment is possible when value of ownership of the shows is established. The ACR business model here is high access, high cost content, and multiple revenue sources with a combination of a branded content model (in ABC.com) and a content aggregator model (in iTunes.com).

YouTube to TV set by Apple TV helps Google to land in the TV industry

The Associated Press reported today that Apple TV user wil be able to access the popular YouTube service on their living room televisions through its video-streaming set-top-box, which is a slim, book-sized device streams movies and songs stored in the user’s iTunes personal library but can’t directly access Internet-based videos. According to Apple Inc., with the impending Apple TV feature, which will be available as a free software update, members of Google Inc.’s YouTube will be able to log on to their YouTube accounts right from their television set. Thousands of the videos on YouTube will be available at launch and more will be added each week until the full YouTube catalog is accessible on Apple TV this fall.
Today's Apple TV, quadrupling its maximum storage capacity with a 160-gigabyte hard drive. will be US$399.

What this means is that Google will now be able to officially get into the TV business, making its purchase of YouTube a good strategic move. More and more broadband/online only video services will join the YouTube and be available to regular TV screen sets. This is what we have discussed in the last chapter of the Webcasting Worldwide book on the future of Webcasting is not limited to the PC screen, but also TV sets and mobile phones. Think about the advertising attractiveness of those videos that will be streamed to regular TV sets to advertisers.

Webcasting go local and local webcasting go national/international

The recent news about CNN's cooperation with Internet Broadcasting is very significant to the webcasting industry. Now CNN's web site is going to show 70 local TV stations' news streams and local TV stations' web site will include CNN's stream means that they bring visitors to one another. No matter users chose to start with a local TV station site or CNN, they can get the same content. The resultant increase in news audience size will definitely boost advertising value to advertisers. Although no details are revealed how the revenue will be shared, it is clear that with CNN dropping premium services, advertising will become the main advertising source for its webcast. Let's see how receptive are advertisers to such double coverage and also the expanded scope of users from local to national/international or from national/international news to local.

Webcasting researchers beware: new research opportunity and redefinition of the audience scope of webcasting.