As we know, online video sharing went ballistic last year, and the cherry on the cake was Google's $1.65b acquisition of YouTube. But there's still a gulf between the level of interest in these sites and how to make money from them.
In the US, user content accounts for 47% of the online video market but only 15% of the total revenue. That share is expected to rise to 55% by 2010.
A new report by Screen Digest has identified five business models used by online video firms: advertising; subscriptions; content licensing; technology licensing; and sales and rental of films and TV shows.
Of those, advertising is the most common but presents problems for both site owners and advertisers. Firstly, how to put relevant ads on millions of different video clips and secondly, how to do so without annoying an audience that often resents what it views as intrusive ads by mainstream companies.
Advertising will continue to be the biggest earner, predicted to rise from $200m last year to nearly $900m in 2010.
Added to that, the market is dominated by YouTube and MySpace so smaller sites will need to offer something extra to compete. That might mean editing tools like Jumpcut, revenue share like Revver or a mix of premium and user content.
Plenty of big media, having been slow to catch on to other web trends, are muscling in on web video; Sony, Time Warner, Yahoo! and Viacom have all got plans for the space this year. Europe is some way behind, although YourKindaTV, Sumo and Putfile will all be battling for UK eyeballs in 2007.
Video sharing sites you may not have explored yet: Addicting Clips, Bolt, Break.com, Blinkx.tv, Blip.tv, Castpost, ClipShack, Dailymotion, Dabble, eVideoshare, Eyespot, Grouper, Jumpcut, MetaCafe, Motionbox, Openvlog, OurMedia, Phanfare, PixParty, Revver, Veoh, Vimeo, VideoEgg, Vidilife, VMIX, Vobbo, vSocial and Youare.tv. Oh, and Google Video, MySpace Video and YouTube too, I suppose.
Good reviews of various sites on DV Guru and Testing Grounds, for starters.
• 2007: the year of broadband devices
A report by Deloitte makes three predictions for the telecoms market this year.
Firstly, this will be the year that broadband-enabled portable devices contribute to a significant increase in internet use. It predicts small, simple and specialist devices like email devices and media players will reach mass adoption, and the tech industry will be able to exploit the interest in those devices.
The net neutrality debate will step up a pace this year. This is the proposal to create tiered levels of services on the internet which is likely to mean that big corporations could have preferential treatment from ISPs and telecoms firms with faster, more reliable connections, but would be likely to disadvantage smaller companies and bloggers, for example. More on Wikipedia.
Lastly, the industry is likely to stay focused on high-bandwidth services like music downloads and IPTV, though the highest earners are usually narrow-bandwidth services such as text messaging, instant messaging, shared calendars and online chat. Those services are most relevant to the mobile as a communications device and will remain the most popular for consumers.
• Unsigned band makes top 40
As predicted, Koopa charted at 31 yesterday - the first time an unsigned band has made it into the 'Hit Parade'. Koopa has been able to pull that off because the official chart rules have been changed to allow download-only sales. Koopa has a suitably "rockin'" MySpace set-up but although US bands will soon be able to sell music through the site, UK bands will have to wait a bit longer. As things are, 95% of Koopa's sales were through music download site 7digital.com.
• Excite adds jobs
Yes, it is still going. Excite is pushing its new, personalised start pages and has added a jobs stream to that, partnering with the jobs website Workcircle. Users can create a search for relevant jobs and add an RSS feed of that search to their own customised homepage.
• AOL buys TradeDoubler for $900m
AOL is hoping to bolster its online advertising in Europe with the acquisition of the web marketing firm TradeDoubler for $900m in shares. Parent company Time Warner already owns Advertising.com and alongside AOL's sites, the aim is to help the company sell more advertising on its European websites. From Bloomberg. Release.
• Yahoo signs animation deal
Yahoo has signed a deal with Hollywood animation agent Gotham to put original animated shorts on its site. This is Yahoo Studios, the original production wing of Yahoo, and the animations are likely to feature on various Yahoo sites including Yahoo TV, Yahoo Movies and Yahoo Video. Gotham's head Ellen Goldsmith-Vein said in the release: ""The Internet is the only place where you can make a real business out of animated shorts, which is exciting for the talent we work with." From Variety.
• Radar festival finalists
Radar is a competition for new music video directors in the UK. Sounds good, doesn't it?
This year's finalists are being shown at the Apple Store in Regent Street this week with the winners announced on Friday 19th January. Anyone can enter, providing they haven't been paid to produce a music video before. Entrants had to choose one of 18 tracks form the Domino, Warp or Tummy Touch labels that included Passion is Accurate by The Kills and Fireside Favourite by Groove Armada.
Given the fairly hefty Apple bias of this competition (entries have to have been made on a Mac, and one random voter wins a 30GB iPod) it's not much of a surprise that you can only vote by going to an Apple store. But as this is billed as a festival for next generation music video that seems a little shortsighted. There are only seven stores in the UK and all in big cities, so that's not really in keeping with the democracy of the internet, etc etc.
And more infuriatingly, there doesn't appear to be any way to watch those videos unless you go to the Apple store. I can't even find them on YouTube. Tsk.
