Online Video Too Hot To Handle!!!

…there is a lot of good stuff out
there and, like everywhere else, there is a lot of junk. Now with the Internet,
90 percent is unwatchable and maybe a 10th of one percent is brilliant.  

Who said this?

a) Jeff Zucker

b) Bill Maher

c) Leslie Moonves

d) Charlie Whittingham

Guess again, it was Michael Eisner.
Remember him? Disney dude. So, he started The Tornante Company which then
launched Vuguru, the new media studio that brought out the mini-series Prom
Queen – aimed at the young, early adopters of new media technology. Episodes
are 90 seconds long, ads are 3-5. Now that
is a ratio people can deal with.

“In the past few years, the
development of exciting and innovative digital media platforms and technologies
has outpaced the creation of truly great content.” Mediapost
called him a content guy at heart; I
would go one step further and call him a capitalist – in the best sense of the
word. Capitalizing on the latest trends in online video advertising, which
according to eMarketer, will grow 89 percent this year
to $775 million.

The Pew
Internet study on the subject reveals that 19% of “gen pop” view or
download video every day, and that goes up to 31% when we’re talking about the
18-29 age group. Ads rank surprisingly high, at 13% – whether they be rich media
integrated into content, or specifically sought out. (This is in the same
ballpark as Sports and Politics, and far, far ahead of Adult. Whew.)

But for Eisner, who’s got anywhere from 3-6 interns trawling
the Internet for good videos to post on Vuguru’s The Cream, the challenge is
not in getting more people to jump on board on the online video train, but to narrow
their focus on what is the highest quality, where the talent is. “You need talent and personality and perseverance, and people
who usually have talent and the passion get to wherever they need to be seen. I
have always felt there is a dearth of talent, and spent most of my career
looking over and under any rock for that talent.”

Talent + professional production?
It’s what the people want, with 62% expressing a preference for video created
by professionals, but this does incur higher costs. It’s the trade-off, I
suppose, for the higher ad revenue that traditional media still brings. We’ll see how it creeps up, slowly but surely.

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