Video publishing represents the intersection of conventional content distribution and modern content syndication; monetizing it requires some different steps.
About.com president and CEO Scott Meyer knows a lot of what advertising in rich media doesn’t have, like measurement standards and an ability to compare metrics to those from typical broadcast or cable ads.
But there are plenty of positives about rich media to make publishers excited.
Today, the advertising in video content primarily runs as a pre-roll, or it is embedded into the page with the video. No one company has stood up to take the lead on rich media advertising, according to Meyer.
And production of both the content and the advertising, in a way that creates slick, good-looking results, is still expensive. Meyer also thinks multimedia search is not well-developed yet, and that publishers need to include metadata in their multimedia and make searching their content an easier prospect.
Some 80 percent of About.com’s traffic comes from search engines. For multimedia content, Meyer suggests publishing a full-text transcript of videos for SEO purposes.
Those publishers occupy a place where they have the supply, and demand has been outstripping available ad inventory. It’s a good time to be a publisher.
Meyer said that About.com plans to undertake several steps as part of its syndication strategy. They will leverage their 500+ guides and recruit specialized video and brand name experts through next year.
Also, Meyer wants About to partner with marketers and with brand name third party providers. He believes About can leverage its huge audience to contribute content.
Once they have that content, About will use Brightcove’s Internet TV model and its smart syndication technology to feed that content to its consumers. Using Brightcove will help About control the syndication of content to other sites.
When About launches its Brightcove player, the videos they will make available shall have advertising included. Publishers will be able to embed the player in their websites, as they can with players from sites like YouTube.
“There is a great opportunity to monetize video content once it is figured out,” said Meyer. “The great thing is that it’s not mom and pops pushing this…. it’s the blue chip companies.”
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
