It is increasingly interesting to witness the mashup of trends as various businesses experiment with and figure out new media.
The latest example is the venerable New York Times, which has been innovating the use of video on its website. The notion of a newspaper doing excellent video is by itself an eye-opener. So far, the newspaper has been offering advertisers 15- and 30-second pre-roll ads on its videos, although a sampling of five Times videos didn’t turn up a single pre-roll. That’s fine with me; pre-rolls are the main reason I don’t watch videos at CNN.
But The Times may have figured out a better way to monetize its video offerings by providing advertisers with a place to present their long-form content. FedEx is the first advertiser to take advantage of the opportunity; five FedEx videos appear at the bottom of The Times’ video page, each one an employee telling a story. Times videos appear in a common player at the top of the video page but selecting a FedEx ad takes you to a the “FedEx Stories” page. Each video runs about 2-1/2 minutes and offers some insight into how employees get things done.
According to a ClickZ story, Times advertisers have been expressing interest in putting their videos on the Times site for a year or so. According to Todd Haskell, vice president for digital sales and operations:
“People loved the unique take that we have on the enterprise reporting or breaking news and they loved the advertising that we offered adjacent to our own videos, but they were looking for ways to offer their own longer form video.”
If newspapers can start earning their profits online by providing advertiser content along with in-your-face advertising, the online properties could wind up subsidizing scaled-down print operations. Still, neither The Times nor FedEx provide embed codes; the only way to see the videos is to make the trip to their sites.
