Ken Doctor led a panel focused on the business model for video aggregation on the web. Panelists were Danny Fishman, President, Broadband Enterprises, Shoba Purushothaman, CEO, TheNewsMarket, Ian Blaine, CEO, thePlatform (acquired in 2006 by Comcast) and Sean Morgan, Founder & CEO, Critical Mention.
Shoba was the most impressive panelist and has done a great job in developing TheNewsMarket as a platform for marketers to get their video messages out to mainstream media. She indicated that about 50% of their users are actually print titles like the NY Times, the FT and the Journal, but those groups are now consuming roughly three quarters of the video. While many marketers are just starting to look at video, she sees rapid growth, using the example of Pfizer, which increased the video they send out to the media by 80% in the past year. Many government agencies have adopted video for their messages as well.
Sean Morgan, who previously co-founded Screaming Media, talked (at great length) about his company, Critical Mention. Critical Mention aggregates video from around the globe - more than 13,000 hours of video every 24 hours. Their primary offering is Critical Mention, which allows searching by spoken word across this massive databases (referred to it as FacTivo). The second business, ClipSyndicate, is similar to Screaming Media but for video. They syndicate content out to various websites.
All the panelists were bullish on video and noted the behavioral changes of new users (children today don't understand linear programming and expect to be able to watch anything on demand). Shoba indicated that the primary video demand is around news and, in particular, entertainment news. She sees strength for financial video in specific niches as well.
On the monetization side, they all see advertising as the primary vehicle. There was discussion that a subscription model could possibly work in very vertical b2b niches, but that advertising was the primary play for all. Demand for video is increasing, which is driving CPM rates higher ($80-100 CPMs for quality stuff). Yet brands are becoming more sophisticated in terms of metrics, which will keep the CPM rate from rising too far.
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