Streaming Media East Old Media Embracing Online Video

Excerpts from Streaming Media East Panel: How Old Media is Embracing Online Video and New Media as posted on Online Video Watch

Moderator: Peter Price, NATAS
Panelists:Isaac Josephson, ABC News Digital
Jordan Hoffner, YouTube
Vivian Schiller, NYTimes.com
Richard Glosser, CondeNet


Vivian: The challenge for legacy media companies is that people are coming and watching videos, but haven’t been able to significantly monetize it. We love our relationship with YouTube, but it needs to come to a point where it isn’t just “branding.”

Isaac: For ABC, there is more of a vested interest in producing their own video and hosting it and driving traffic to it. We can do an hour long interview with Ron Paul, that wouldn’t air in its entirety, but we can run it online.

Jordan: The important point is “not monetizing it in a meaningful way.” Traditional media used to be the only game in town. Now there is fragmentation, and plenty of places for advertisers to spend money. It needs to be looked at in a different way. The notion of ‘scarcity’ is gone.

Richard: the genie is out of the bottle. Content is being freely distributed around the web. When they put Desperate Housewives on iTunes, that should have been a clarion call to everyone. What access and unique insight can we bring to the table? You can’t force people to consume media only on your site.

Vivian: “Distribute or die.” There are plenty of ways to distribute content beyond YouTube. Bloggers post RSS feed links, and those drive traffic back to our site where we can monetize it. Some experiments work, some don’t. Video is not a big money maker for us right now. We have pre-roll and sponsorships and no regrets. But with YouTube, we have to consider what the long term strategy is, and how that works for us, as a content creator and owner. How is video distribution going to monetized?

Richard: There is more wind behind video than other products. We’re starting to see TV money move to the Web. And the ones leading the charge are the ones with the most to lose. People will go around broadcast networks if they can.

Jordan: We wouldn’t have launched overlays if we didn’t have a really good reason. We tested and tested and tested. We are doing lots of testing to figure out what the best ad formats are for different video. Pre-roll isn’t good for us, or our type of video. That said, it is important for people to remember that we don’t advertise on user generated content. We only monetize our professionally generated content.

Isaac: Overlays are good for now. But we’re asking advertising clients to come up with new creative. But the CPMs for overlays is a full order of magnitude lower than what we see for preroll. From a business perspective, they just aren’t the answer for us right now.