The undeniable conclusion, from CNET:
Morgan Spurlock, the documentarian behind “Super Size Me” and “Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?,” put it bluntly. “The reason numbers aren’t released (for digital distribution revenues) is because the numbers are pathetic,” he said. “The numbers are sadly low in comparison to what we expect from film and television.”
Online will never make up traditional, offline revenues. Media companies will need to realize this and come up with something else to offset shrinking offline revenues and “pathetic” online revenues of offline assets.
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WatchMojo NewsletterFrom NewTeeVee’s coverage of a SXSW panel on “why isn’t Web TV monetizing as well as TV?”
Why isn’t web video monetizing as well as television?
According to Richman, 93 percent of sponsor money is still spent on TV, even though much web programming has larger viewerships than some cable programs, and can often be better targeted to a sponsor’s demographic. “There’s still not a level of respect from Hollywood and advertisers” in the online space, he says. Still, Richman believes sponsors will gradually get used to buying ads for the web. They better: Where $300 once seemed like a lot of money to sped on developing web videos, Richman says some of Break Media’s programming can now cost $5,000-10,000.
More here. I think some of it has to do with the following:
Advertisers look for a number of things. For content owners to succeed on YouTube, and in generating revenues in general, they will need:
- reach, as measured by audience size
- relevance, as measured by demographics
- frequency, as measured by publishing cycle
- fit, as measured by content. This can also include surety of content.Online marketers will also look considerably at engagement, or time spent on a site, but I think that is BS because advertising is actually always obtrusive and unwelcome, and engagement is one buzzword the social media experts coined to look smart.
Anyway, all of those things are important, no doubt. However, I will break my rule of talking about partners and add one thing, the one thing that YouTube has had a challenge with, and the one thing that is not even directly mentioned in the list above. I think this is the reason why they are adopting this “sell it your own damn self” strategy, and that is predictability… not predictability of content safety, but predictability of volume.
Marketers don’t care if your video or channel generated 1M streams last month; they need some assurance that you will generate 1M streams going forward. Few can do that. I think we can. So far, so good.
In other words, not only does a video (or channel) need to be broadcasting high-quality content, safe to advertisers, match their target audience etc., but they also need to be able to deliver the impressions that advertisers look for.
Read more from the original post here. Then again, TV has had decades to develop, whereas online video remains fairly new. Will online advertising ever surpass TV? Maybe.
