Online Videos - How much ad revenue?

Everyone is missing a key thing here. You don't simply go to a company and say "Be a partner with us, please?" If you are going to have prestitials or interstitials on your video content, you are going to have to use an ad server. Who will serve ads in your video. Their CPM is low, but you are monetizing.

However, you simply don't get to put prestitials and interstitials into just any video. You can't plop it into a youtube video or vimeo video. It doesn't work that way. You need to have detailed analytics on the ad serve, thus proving you are actually serving said ad. And view counts don't count. You are likely to drop most viewers before the one minute mark. That would be before you actually serve the ad. Which means, you don't get paid.

You need to use an OVP to have content with ads. Brightcove and Ooyala are two of them. That requires you to pay a contract and pay for the video you serve. But you get the analytics you need and the ad sever integration you need.

There is much more to it than wanting to plop an ad into your content.

//And someone said this earlier, ad serving doesn't offset the costs of streaming. Ask Hulu.
 
Honestly, it seems like the only people making any money with their videos are youtube elite. The talking heads in the form of Fred, NigaHiga, ShaneDawsonTV, and the like.

Become a youtube partner. And somehow trap lighting in a bottle. And you'll be good to go. I read in an article online (reliable? I don't know) that Fred made ~ 100K a year.

But how long can it last?
 
djbobbyrhodes said:
But how long can it last?
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that's the question!

i don't know-yet. i'm trying to sort it all out. it might be a pipe dream.

even if it is sustainable, it might require a massive start-up cost.

i'll give the book a good read and see what i get from it.

the research might present alternative business models. who knows, by the end of all this
research i might find an under-serviced market that's totally unrelated to filmmaking.
 
Yeah, I still say make something and then sell it. If you're interested in making instructional videos for profit, then sell instructional videos, you'll probably make a better -- no wait...you will ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT ANY DOUBT make more money if you simply sold the videos you're talking about making than you would by putting ads in front of them.

The vague transitioning of services and marketing has blurred things to make us think that you don't have to actually make anything to make money. I'm in banking and marketing, I know that in certain circumstances this is true. But for the individual person looking to be in business for themselves, dude, you have to be either doing something or making something. If you do something you have to be knowledgeable at what it is you're doing (or else why would anyone use you instead of someone with a longer standing brand name?), or you have to make something -- that something doesn't have to be any "good" it just has to be viewed as something that people want, which is where your marketing savvy comes into play.

But trading information, unless that information is built on monetary investment and on the backs of massive conglomerates (e.g. trading stock, bonds, etc), without SUBSTANTIAL start-up capital is just such a bad, bad, bad investment of your time.

Again, make something and then sell that something. I know it goes against every get rich quick scheme ever contrived, but in the end you have product (and with things like Createspace you don't even have to invest in the printing of your product).

Good luck.
 
i think you might be right, chambers-about the selling part.

this online ad revenue thing is pretty tricky to be sustainable and viable for any small starting point (asset-wise and content-wise).

i'm looking into a subscription-based model (which would entail having something worth subscribing to).

i'll get back with a few ideas.
 
i was reminded of this in another thread, but i think it's relevant:

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I AGREE
 
Maybe. I've been down the web series route, and I know a lot of those guys in the IAWTV and so forth. I got pretty burned out on the whole scene when I realized it was basically just the new form of spec short, that the people making money are either very lucky or were very smart about their demographic (and in most cases they still struggled by for a good long while before achieving any thing approachng "success").

Since realizing that, and realizing that probably 99% of the people doing web shows would jump to TV and never look back if given the chance, it's seemed a lot more efficient to write a great television spec or run the festivals with a good short than it is to write, produce, and endlessly promote a web series. I also in general have found the bar of quality to be lower. Sure, there are some great shows (very, very few, but a few), but mostly I have seen mediocre-quality material heralded as award-worthy (and award-winning) on the web. Stuff that you wouldn't take a second look at if it was on TV.
 
Fahad said:
valid remarks, adkimery.

it's just my philosophy about information and the internet.
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Given this (ahem) "philosophy" of yours, how do you expect an ad-supported model to be sustainable in our apparently copyright free future? What's to stop a number of giant, already entrenched, corporate aggregators (who neither fund nor help create anything, making them infinitely worse than our current corporate overlords) from simply taking your videos and stripping out your ads in favor of their own? What's to stop pirates from stripping out the ads...period? Do you think the television shows being passed around on torrent sites right now have commercial breaks?

They do not.

What this (ahem) "philosophy" of yours WILL lead to, is a system where only product placements are able to retain their value as an advertising mechanism. If you can muster the courage, take a moment and try to envision a world where the only viable revenue stream for shows and movies is product placements...

/suicide emoticon



P.S. Anyone know what percentage of advertising revenue Google shares with its "partners"? I bet it's sharecropper low.
 
arroway said:
Well, good luck catching the unicorn. He's gotta be out there somewhere!
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You're right, he should definitely give up and not waste anymore thought on ideas, especially if everyone tells him it can't be done, we all know that there are no stories of that saying ever being proven wrong. No one ever does anything that isn't the way it's always been done. I didn't do it, and I don't personally know anyone that did so it is certainly impossible. Stop thinking and dreaming you.
 
There is a danger to futurist optimism, in that it lets one's guard down in the present. We are seeing this exact scenario play out now with the widespread and ever-increasing digital looting of all things IP. And the looters, if you manage to slow any of them down long enough in the midst of their anarchistic and gleeful pillaging, will, with arms full of unearned and ill-gotten merchandise, mumble one version or another of the same hollow prospect, that "NEW BUSINESS MODELS" need only be adapted to, for the scales to right, and the sun to shine, and for the eventual betterment of all. We are more than a decade in at this point and these supposed "NEW BUSINESS MODELS" have yet to reveal themselves to any degree worth more than a schoolboy's footnote. In the same span of time, a number of our lower bandwidth creative industries have been bloodied if not brought to their knees, and even for them I fear the worst is far from over. The higher bandwidth creative industries, with Moore's law forever chipping away at their relative immunity, are fast approaching their own critical mass. For a great, post-copyright case study as to where this all seems destined to go, one need look no further than the modern Nigerian film "industry" -- suffice to say it's not a pretty picture. Which brings us back full circle to what I believe is the only question worth asking: How long are we prepared to wait? At what point do you admit the cure-all is nothing but rose-colored snake oil? For me, that time is the present. I don't say this with the intent to discourage but merely to share my thoughts on a subject that concerns me as intrinsically as it does any other artist (in general) or filmmaker (in particular). Someday, the coin will stop spinning and we will see which side lands face up. In the meantime, feel free to follow whatever siren song sings sweetest.
 
Well, herein lies the problem with some of the logic in this thread. We are using numbers and methodologies derived from the Baire Witch Syndrome. Which applies to Fred, Paranormal Activity, and most of those "unicorn" stories. (In fact, many unicorn stories are really horses with a cone on their heads) There is an assumption that by finding one unicorn it is entirely possible to have an entire farm of unicorn.

Unfortunately, this particular unicorn is very rare indeed.

Which brings me to another point. Just because you have content doesn't mean you can plop an ad on it and call it done. Fred is an anomaly. Justin Bieber, an anomaly. There are plenty of amazing things out there, but rarely doesn't it go viral enough to have the traffic to allow ads and to make said ads profitable.

Especially if you go the Youtube route. You need to apply to get into Youtube's partner program which allows ads on your content, and such, revenue sharing. If you don't have the traffic, youtube won't serve ads. The end. Dreams of 50k a month, shattered.

You can get an OVP on board with an Ad Server, host video on your site and serve ads, thus making money. But you need to market your bum off to get traffic and hope that the content is good enough to warrant Prestitial ads. Because if your end-user needs to sit though a 30second spot and the content isn't worth it, they aren't coming back.

Really, what it comes down to is producing the content, that gets the traffic and entertains people, and then you factor in monetization by ads. Else, you force your user base to hate you and you have a business model that doesn't really work off the page.
 
RockmanX3 said:
This kid on youtube is making over $50k a month with a cheap camera and changing the pitch of his voice
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Any evidence for that figure? I have seen nothing to indicate anyone on youtube is making 600k a year.

A handful of them are apparently making in the neighborhood of 100k annually. But take a look at what kind of content has reached this marginal pinnacle: celebrity gossip, talking vegetables, and fifteen year old emo kids screaming into their webcams.

Quick! Somebody call this progress!
 
i appreciate everyone's thoughts here. there are a lot of considerations to a venture like this.

i started this thread seeking to find a sustainable business model for low-budget online video production. as i see from numerous examples across the web, the cheapest way to at least start is advertising.

through the course of this discussion, there have been three main opinions/advices. they are:

1 ) "maybe it's possible" theory
2 ) alternative income approach (subscription-based, dvd sales, etc.)
3 ) "it's impossible to make money off of advertising" or online videos all together

i appreciate the input of the first two. but what i don't get is why people are saying it's impossible to do this. i am not asking how to make wine out of water or gold from cheap metals. tell me:

why is it so impossible?
why are successful low budget productions anomalies? if an anomaly happens enough times, won't it become a rule? the anomalies are just anomalies because no one has done them before... if what they do can be broken down, analyzed, recognized, organized, and repeated, how can it be an anomaly?

granted, you have to have great content, great business sense (marketing, promotion, content, target, etc.), a great drive, and great patience.

let me get one thing clear that some have failed to recognize:

what i hoped to get out of this thread is a good understanding of the business side of this venture. but here it's being repeated that it's impossible to do (in the first place). i'm not asking to make 10, 50, or 100k a month from a venture like this. i'm not asking to find a get rich quick scheme. i'm not asking to be a millionaire. if those are things that YOU are thinking about, then thinking it's impossible, please try not to project those thoughts into your input.

what i'm asking is, if one can make a decent living doing what numerous other people are doing online.

i (and others) have provided references, examples, articles, illustrations, and hard numbers and ratios. give examples of failed ventures, then we can analyze why those ventures failed. was it bad content? bad marketing? bad finance? if the answer to those questions is "no", then we have other questions to answer, until we recognize a fault. and so on with other examples.

how can it be impossible if there are numerous examples? anomalies? there are too many anomalies to call them that anymore.

i'm not being defensive, i'm just showing you why i don't believe it's impossible. i don't believe it because i see it is in fact possible. i am not talking about magic, luck, superstition, miracles, or anything like those. i'm talking about business. when you say "impossible", it's as if we're talking about something in the realm of the supernatural. i simply refuse to believe that, unless you can prove otherwise. this thread contains lots of proof to the contrary.

cheers.
 
...

Well since your post is entirely directed at me...I'll help break it down for you. The hard numbers you've provided are based on the you taking a CPM, applying it to projected numbers and coming up with an answer.

Let me tell you why what I listed is an anomaly. I can't talk about Blair Witch, since I wasn't in the industry when it was going around. But I can tell you this - how many films have been made similar to Blair Witch? How many have made it to theaters? Blair Witch 2 barely covered it's production expense. Not to mention P&A.

Paranormal Activity was the best marketing scam ever enacted on the population. Did you really think Paramount wouldn't release the film if it didn't get 1 million requests? Paramount was already set to distribute the film nationwide before the request thing went into play. That's not speculation, that's based on marketers who work in Hollywood.

Fred, Fred is indeed getting 100k a year or more in sponsorships and ad revenue. But he is doing 1million views per video. Not 10,000. He has a regular release schedule. He has a demo. (skewing young tweens, 13 - 17, but I suspect he actually skews younger than 13 since youtube doesn't report younger than 13 year olds.) So why doesn't Fred apply to you? Because that's like comparing your film to the new Warner release and saying, "they did it, I can too!"

Yes, you do have concrete numbers, those aren't surprising, but you haven't yet showed how to monetize YOUR content.

I've told you it's possible, just not by Youtube unless you have something prolific that isn't just a one-off viral hit. If you have 100k viewers per video you put online, then youtube might just work.

Most of the figures you mentioned were from companies who are monetizing content. People who have regular content that is being viewed. Or people that have video content as an integral part of their business model. That's where ad servers make their money. Not on filmmaker jim who has a video and wants to serve an ad. Can you serve an ad on a film? Sure. You can sign a contract with an ad server and then you've monetized. But you need to have the eyeballs there watching your content.

Five success stories (actually I can think of about 10 offhand that aren't produced by a major content provider) hardly equate to a rule. As aforementioned, seeing a success story and calling it truth is the Paranormal Activity Syndrome at it's finest.

Out of the two responses I've had in this thread no where did I say it was impossible to monetize content.

You can't just put an ad in a youtube video. That is impossible. Not because I said so, but because that's how youtube works. You need to be in their Partner Program. Which you have to apply to. And if you don't get in, you have to wait a few months to apply again. They require you to have significant reach on the site. They won't serve ads in a video that is getting 10,000 views. It won't happen.

You need an OVP and Ad Server to serve ads yourself. Again, not impossible. This is also a truth. You don't actually need an Ad Server if you are selling your own ads, but you do need an OVP to host that video and allow you to place an ad in that video. All ads are done by reporting. You need to have analytics and so does the ad server.

What you are currently doing is setting up a system kinda like communism. It works great on paper, but not so much in reality. I'm not trying to crush your dreams here. But your "numerous people online" isn't so numerous. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to the tube of you. Many of those are cats and people doing stupid stuff. Out of that, maybe every day, a few hours of video is uploaded that can be effectively monetized. It's not a matter of seeing a success and wanting to replicate it.

Ad serves are something you work into. You don't start with ads and work to content and then to audience. You have to have the content, then the audience, then the monetization. It's a paradigm different from what you see and want.

If you want to take my methodology and call me out on it because it doesn't align with your research. By all means. My feelings aren't hurt. Though I am trying to help you here. I am trying to help others here. I've done a huge amount of research on this myself, and my numbers don't align with yours.

But I am not going to prove how you are wrong and I am right. You have an idea on this, you have a way of thought, you have your own paradigm. And that's fine. I am merely trying to inform you of how it actually works outside the paper. And I've provided my own solutions. I don't think my services are required any more in this thread. Best of luck with your venture.
 
Found this over at NewTeeVee about JibJab and thought it was relevant.

"JibJab created its direct-to-consumer model, which it rolled out in the fourth quarter of 2007, after the ad market failed to be as robust as it needed to support its business. In a video interview with CinemaTech blogger Scott Kirsner earlier this year, the co-founders said that advertising doesn’t work for online video."


-Andrew
 
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