Video: Technical Challenges of Monetizing and Selling Online Video
Learn more about video monetization at Streaming Media West.
Read the full transcript of this clip:
George Meek: We have clients ranging from big broadcasters to individuals who have yoga videos that they want to sell. So, a massive mixture of clients. We’ve even got a dentist who’s monetizing a root canal video, but he’s selling that video for $2,000 because it’s very specialized. Luckily, I had a voucher, so anyone who wants a root canal, I’m pretty good at that now.
They say, “Well, firstly, I want to monetize this piece of content.” Most people already have a video and a distribution solution in place. If they don’t, we actually are now working with a number of partners just to provide that and make it simple, so you don’t have to worry. Just give me the content and we’ll get it up and running.
The next thing is understanding is support. So, as soon as you start to monetize a piece of content, you’re actually going to be dealing directly with the end user. You’ll be amazed how many people can now actually put a credit card number into a box, so it’s essential that we look after those.
The next challenge is being global is being able to support the customers on a multilingual basis. This also means 24/7 support because content around the world never stops.
It’s also about having the right interface for them, so we try the best as our business to have a two-click as close as possible to Amazon to make it very easy for people to buy. That then gives high conversion rates and actually makes the events profitable.
The other thing is, people are incredibly bad at paywall with respect to their time to market. Normally, it’s like, "Oh, we've got this piece of content, three days time it’s going live--should we put a paywall in?" So, their chances of being successful are 50/50, because it doesn't necessarily give you time to market.
We’ve got a local client here, Barstool Sports, that’s quite interesting when you’re talking about monetizing local content. They had a hillbilly boxing event in Pennsylvania and it’s basically a barroom brawl--there’s no actual real-name boxers. But Barstool Sports, they’re a very viral business. They’re very good at social media. So they put the paywall up within two days with us, and they put this event on, it was a Friday night, it was popcorn and beer night, everyone’s home from the pub, something good to watch. I think one of their reports was that one of the brawls was a two-hour event with tens of thousands of subscribers. They probably made 20 times more money on that than they would for a normal advertising. But again, that’s a local piece of content without a single famous piece of famous sporting content in there.
And then you've got the other side of it, someone like Conor McGregor, who decides his middle name is pay-per-view, and he decided that he was going to monetize an interview of himself. Again, that was interesting, because it’s about scale. So here’s where promoting meant putting it on Facebook Live, getting his Facebook audience, and as soon as the main event was starting, cutting to Facebook stream, redirecting to the player. Then, what we have to manage is tens of thousands of people coming in and looking to transact at that time.
So, those are some good examples of what's going on.
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