Do You Know How to Monetize Your Video?

WHEN YOUTUBE LAUNCHED, it enabled everyone to become a video producer. However, until recently, the production quality of most user generated videos have been entertaining at best but not something a big brand would want to call you about sponsorship.




Now, it seems that every day content producers with stellar broadcast production credentials are asking for an opportunity to pitch. It's almost as if all of Hollywood has become unemployed and is looking to peddle their ideas for a video series. If it's not the producers, the indie video sites jump in to fill the void. There's another Funny Or Die, YuMe or strike.tv eager to partner with Nike and company to bring great, original, and not-for-the-faint-of-marketer-heart content to the world.

So, how do we compete with the pros?

As a first step, we need to define what we consider success. The challenge resides in measurement options being limited and lacking visibility. Here are three measures that are easy to capture without incurring incremental cost:

1. Total streams

2. Average viewing duration

3. Click-through data from clickable placement in or around the content

It is safe to assume that success is achieved if your show hits a "feel good" number of streams/views. However, monetizing traffic has proven very hard even for Google / YouTube which know a thing or two about the subject. So, for now, producing a hit show in your specific niche and rounding up sponsors for it once you hit this "feel good" number of views seems to be the way to go.

Open Your Own Virtual Movie Theater and Become a “Filmanthropist.”

At SnagFilms.com you can watch full-length documentary films for free. That’s fine - BUT they also make it easy for you to “take them with you,” and put them anywhere on the web. Just embed a movie widget on your web site or blog to open your OWN virtual movie theater. You will automatically become a “Filmanthropist,” as SnagFilms calls their “Snaggers.” By donating your pixels, you support independent films. A win-win deal, no matter how I look at it.

When you click on the “info” button on any widget, it will show you details about that film and the related charity you can support. With a starting library of 225 documentaries, growing daily, that you can browse by topic, channel, or alphabetically, you’re bound to find films that resonate with you. There is a widget for EVERY film, so any film you like can be snagged right onto your site or blog.

Here is one - the famous, or if you are MickyD, infamous Super Size Me:





Why Should You Snag?

For one thing, it’s a great way to share something you love with your friends. But there’s another great reason to do it.

Documentary films rarely get the audience that big-budget Hollywood films do. And chances are, if you like a film, your peers will too! It’s a great way to support filmmakers and get the word out about issues you care about. So go for it!

Cybercast credit: SnagFilms

iTV From The Other Side of the Atlantic

By Steven Vass, Media Correspondent, The Sunday Herald, UK .

"Will the click of a mouse bring TV to its knees?

Faster broadband connections, greater availability of programmes and films on the web and the arrival of video search engines look set to unleash a viewing revolution.

JUST WHEN you thought you could head for the hills with your Freeview box, television seems set to completely change again.

We are no longer talking about extra channels, however. The idea of rival packages will be painfully passé. What is now on the horizon is the chance to watch any programme or film, whenever you like, most likely at no charge.

Welcome to the world of internet television. Whether you want vintage episodes of The Tube or the original print of The Man Who Knew Too Much or Friday night's EastEnders, it will never be more than a few clicks away.

Last week, there were two more signs that these delights could soon be upon us, both in announcements from companies that are far from being household names. The first came from Tioti, or Tape It Off the Internet, a London and Seattle-based venture aiming to provide a searchable database of all television programmes and films on the net. Having been trialling to 16,000 early adopters for the past few months, it is committed to a full launch in June.

Then it emerged that Blinkx, a more general video search engine, is to demerge from its Cambridge-based parent, technology firm Autonomy, and seek a listing on the alternative investment market next month. See my take on them here.

With video searching far more difficult than text searching because of the lack of words for the program to latch on to, Blinkx is reckoned to be as close as anybody to making it work, including Google.

If there is finally a buzz around companies offering video search methods, it is because the content is finally arriving online in a big way. Pirated versions of the latest Hollywood blockbusters or hit shows might have been available online for a number of years, but average broadband speeds are now such that big media is finally wading in...."

Total Recall, Now on the Small Screen Near You

That is, on your iPod, courtesy of iTunes, and all other legal (and we are LEGAL, aren't we all!?) movie download sites, I'm sure.




In case you forgot (I did), the movie is set in the year 2084. Douglas Quaid (aka Guv of CA these days) is a construction worker who has been having dreams about being on the planet Mars with a sexy brunette. (What else???) After seeing an ad from Rekall, a company that sells imaginary adventures by implanting memories, he decides to get a 'vacation' in Mars from them, one in which he will take a vacation from himself as a spy: the ego trip called "Blue Skies on Mars."

All right, that's enough. I don't get a commission to sell the movie the Nth+1 time. Enjoy, if you're into Hollywoodian Sci-fi.