Online video isn’t a busted flush, but it’s not a royal flush for publishers either
In response to a Mumbrella article asking whether online video for publishers is more costly than revenue rich, Dallas Baird explains the ecosystem and pitfalls facing publishers in the space.
A Nordic lad calling himself ‘Pewdiepie’ has a good little thing going. He delivers a skad of pretty simple gamer related videos through his YouTube channels that show hacks, cheats and game vision of new releases. His shtick is carrying on like a pork chop while opening up the world of gaming to the devoted.
I once showed one of his videos to a room full of ‘legacy media’ staff at Bauer. A colleague from a long print background asked pointedly ‘Who watches this shit?’ Answer: Seemingly everybody.
As of 7:36 AEST last night, the goofy little Swede has logged 47,912,476 subscribers to his totally free YouTube channels and has shipped 13,310,034,708 video views to his fans.
Like I say to my son, “you’re good at working things out, so work it out.” If investment versus return is the biggest issue be grateful. Google can still take money from Good Guys for serving me microwave ads 3 weeks after I bought one..am I the only one that thinks there is a problem with the advertising industry – it took me two sessions online to research and I bought from HV, all up 3 days. Be nice to deliver a client a solution based on the realities of path to purchase and thin market principles instead of heralding the genius of pitching ice to Eskimos.
It’s not video or any of the other whistles and bells that are busted it’s the business model of publishers.
After more than a decade, publishers are still trying to produce the exact model they used to produce print newspapers and stupidly keep expecting it to work online. There’s a lot of technology flash around the online sites but fundamentally the traditional model is unchanged.
That is your problem, right there.
What is it they say about the definition of insanity?
Doing the same thing over and over again even after it fails every time. Welcome to newspaper publishing online.
Pewdiepie is successful because he has a market built around a community of interest, which he knows well, and a model that serves that market.
Here is the secret (except it is not) for newspapers to build a successful, paying model. The online world is about building communities of interest first.
Despite what editors think, newspaper readerships are not communities of interest – they are just eyes.
In that nugget of the bleeding obvious is the foundation for a new model. The publishers and their board members are free to call me if they still don’t get it.