Online Video Advertising: What's Wrong With This Picture?
It’s interesting when you look at this model and compare it to user-generated content (UGC) sites such as YouTube. According to the one agency I spoke with in-depth, Tremor Media, it is impossible to sell an ad campaign on UGC sites because you never know who’s going to watch or what they will see.
“Campaigns are well targeted,” says Michael Schwalb of Tremor Media. “The advertiser likes technologies like ours. They can make sure that their advert is associated with content that is well targeted.” This explains why UGC sites have such a hard job finding ad campaigns. Ultimately, this means UGC sites may not survive through ad revenues alone. In fact, to validate this point, Schwalb pointed out that YouTube was named one of TIME magazine’s 10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade. So perhaps the smallest business models are destined to survive and grow and the very largest ones are destined to fade away.
Rulli was the most philosophical, saying, “lowest overheads is the trick”. Without a doubt, it may be with this philosophy that ad revenues will sustain many small businesses in the online video sector.
The last word went to Manoff. I think of this as a new take on the old “content is king” philosophy: “If you own the content you shouldn’t expect users to just come to you, you need to go and find them in their place of interest.”
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