Reading about IAB trying to come up with standards for online video advertising, I wonder: should we be coming up with standards for online video advertisements when we don’t have real standards for online video content?
Scouring through TubeMogul’s archives, I’ve realized the three main obstacles facing online video content producers are the following:
1- Most People Don’t Watch Web Video For More Than 60 Seconds
In other words, because (before even seeing this study) we knew that people would not watch videos for longer than a couple of minutes, we decided to keep videos short and sweet in the 1-2 minute range… you might ask: “well, why not create 30 second videos?”
The answer is two-fold:
a) We want videos long enough to that we can eventually justify running 0:05 - 0:30 ads, if we choose to run such pre-roll ads on our property and network, and
b) Our series are generally 5-10 minutes long (whether it is a Travel Guide on Chicago or the Seven Wonders of the World), so since we break it up into shorter clips, making them too short would create way too many videos.
2 - Online video lives fast, dies young
For example our Interview with Lady Gaga did 100s of streams initially, but now does 1,000-10,000 streams per day… the same can be said for many other videos. If you can generate streams to older videos, you pave the way to building a successful syndication business, which we have.
3 - Web series struggle to hold on to audiences
I think this is a classic textbook example of people being lazy and looking for get-rick-quick schemes. Truth is, even “overnight successes” took years to build. Our rationale has always been the same:
You have to create a mechanism where web viewers have a higher propensity to stumble on your content, the only way to do is by emphasizing quantity, quality and frequency. We talked about this in depth in Standing out from the Clutter.
This speaks for itself: our average streams per day and month has consistently grown…
What are some of the other obstacles facing content producers? Well, the lack of business model is the main one, which maybe explains why the IAB is looking at coming up with standards.
Digg this Blog
Share on Facebook
WatchMojo on Twitter
WatchMojo on YouTube
Add to Favorites
WatchMojo Newsletter
