Check out this insight-packed interview with Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media for the Disney-ABC Television Group. Among his many worthy observations, Cheng asserts:
"Tying into Facebook and other social networks doesn't mean we can necessarily monetize our content, because open social activity is going to be more monetizable in our branded environments. What is most monetizable is the social activity around our branded content anywhere."
Translation: your branded environment, not YouTube or another mass market website, is the best place to encourage social networking around your brand. And be sure that folks can access your content in any place and on any device.
Too often brands deploy the right social networking tools but do so within the wrong context. That is, folks can add your content to their Facebook pages, comment & link to your goodies, reference them on Twitter and more, but not enough of this activity leads them to and occurs within your branded environment.
Encouraging social networking around your offerings is great. Using social networking to drive traffic to and spur interaction within your brand-centric setting is what pays the bills.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Social Networking That Pays the Bills - Ministry & Business Marketing and Media Blog
Saturday, January 31, 2009
YouTube and William Morris To Team for Premium Content - Ministry and Business Marketing & Media Blog
Word is swirling online that YouTube and major talent agency William Morris will team up to place premium content on the world's largest video portal. This serves the dual purpose of meeting YouTube's need for content they believe they can fully monetize and the needs of William Morris clients to have yet another platform to market themselves, perhaps after they've been rejected by major film and television studios.
This brings a couple questions to mind concerning both the William Morris clients and existing YouTube partners.
What will appearing on YouTube do for top-shelf WM talents? It used to be that top film stars refused to appear on television becuase the small screen was perceived to be for small-timers.
Clearly, for those closer to the bottom of the food chain YouTube could represent a killer opportunity to build a fan base. But for those already doing well, how many will be willing to appear on YouTube and how will doing so impact their brands? Brad Pitt and friends showing up for a Jimmy Kimmel bit is one thing. Showing up on YouTube in a low-level star's video is another.
On the flip side, what impact will the appearance of established stars have on the traffic of YouTube partners such as Smosh, Fred, Dave Days and others? Perhaps new Hollywood talent will bring new viewers to YouTube? Then again, if the decreased audiences of top-tier TV shows in a sea of 300 channels is at all instructive, then existing YouTube partners should seriously consider branching out.
Also consider the impact of YouTube's overall efforts to make their site more user-friendly and keep folks on their portal longer.
Search bars, menus of related content from other producers and other functionality is great for fans, but most assuredly dilutes the brands of individual YouTube producers. What then will a flood of not just prosumer but studio quality content do to existing YouTubers?
Monday, January 26, 2009
YouTube to Allow Major Partners to Serve Their Own Ads - Ministry and Business Marketing and Media Blog
As TechCrunch broke today, YouTube is rumored to be planning to allow big media partners to serve their own ads, with YouTube getting a piece of the pie. As the article further points out, most of YouTube's revenue is currently generated from ads placed with these media partners and YouTube would love to expand that revenue stream.
This new strategy might allow YouTube to capture a bigger piece of the advertising pie with global media companies, but it brings one big question to my mind: what about YouTube's other partners including Fred, Dave Days, Corey Vidal and others? What if they want to bring other advertisers to the table? Will YouTube share revenue with them as well?
Many of these partners have developed or are developing into full-fledged media brands. Why not allow them also to bring advertisers to the table with revenue-sharing?
To this point, advertisers have generally been reluctant to place ads on YouTube's smorgasbord of content. Why not allow any partners who break through with advertisers to run their own ads, whether they're Warner Brothers or Household Hacker?
What do you think? Would you open the ad gates to everyone or would you only play ball with media empires?
