Authored by Tom Ohanian and Featured in MediaPost's Online Video Insider
July 16, 2008
OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS, Mark Cuban has blogged about Google, YouTube, and Hulu. These blogs have included the following, and I paraphrase the concepts: 1. That if you upload your content to YouTube, be forever prepared for Google to own your content, and every right associated with that content. 2. That YouTube, with its amalgam and mishmash of content, has no business model that is sustainable. 3. That "Hulu is kicking YouTube's Ass."
Now, I watch videos on YouTube and I watch
videos on Hulu. Frankly, I think they are both great for what they
are. And to me that precise combination of words, "what they are" is
a key in being able to enjoy them. Everyone has a notion of what
YouTube is all about and the content there is decidedly not just
about the often-cited-now-clichéd cat flushing a toilet. I know just
as many people who watch excerpts of shows, concerts, cooking tips
-- you name it -- and are thrilled to find those things.
And Hulu is wonderful. The user interface
is streamlined, intelligent, and intuitive. And the content
diversity continues to grow with an interesting mixture of old,
nostalgic, and new.
But Google's recent announcement that
"Family Guy" creator Seth McFarlane will be creating exclusive
content for Google and served up as part of its AdSense system
demands attention. First, the content is uniquely tied to ad revenue
through pre-rolls, post-rolls, or overlays. Second, the content is
from a proven creator of programming. Third, there is a significant
budget associated with creating the content for "Seth McFarlane's
Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy," a collection of 50 two-minute episodes. In several
different reports, that production cost is purported to be in the
multimillions. Fourth, the ever elusive "what's the business model?"
question appears to be answered in that when a viewer clicks on the
video clip, that advertiser pays a fee. Fifth, the general viewer
make-up for this content is better known than is usually the case.
This makes it possible to push the content to where the viewer is
addressed, instead of creating a presence to which interested
viewers must proactively navigate.
The notion (and the allure) that there may
be a way to offer one piece of content that is associated with X
number of advertisers for those two minutes is enormous. What does a
time-slice mean when you can do that? Instead of being able to only
sell, say three spots, if the content is syndicated to
50 sites, that's
150 slices for ad
placement (pre-roll, overlay, and post-roll). And who wouldn't be
tempted to place that bet?
Signiant recently participated in an
iHollywood webinar that was entitled, "The Truth about Digital: Fact
vs. Fiction in the Digital Supply Chain." One of the questions I
received had to do with how content will be delivered based on user
preferences and user input, and how the content would potentially be
reformatted on-the-fly according to a viewer's "input or settings."
Much of this will need to be accomplished by what I like to refer to
as "automated recombinant digital media workflows" (how do you like
that?), that have to be modeled, created, and put in place very
quickly.
I think that the "where's the business
model," "the content looks crappy," "you won't own the content"
musings are rapidly turning into very well-thought-out approaches --
and those notions are going to become meaningless in very short
order.