Amassing viewers for internet video - how are the ‘others’ faring?
According to a recent report from eMarketer 155.2 million people will watch on line video in 2008. Thus, ad spending will amp up to $775 million before 2007 ends (and up to $2.8 billion by 2010).
So, where are all of these eye balls now? According to Alexa and Compete Trends (and undisputed by anyone who knows anything) they are plugged into video.aol.com, video.google.com and YouTube. Yep, the places that have the eyes already.
Plenty of time, money and human resources from these behemouths have been thrown at driving on-line video adoption. What are the other video sites (with far less money and human resources) doing to get traffic? Is it working? Or will it work?
I took a glance at 20 or so ‘other’ on line video sites and noticed some surprising trends…
Irregardless of content (mainstream or your neighbor’s webcam) sites that clearly had pricey marketing launches and intermittent press suffer myocardial infarctions (spikes of death). Take a look at traffic patterns for revver, vsocial and videoegg for instance. I looked at revver, vsocial and videoegg Compete Trends as well. What do you think will happen to these sites as they run out of capital?
Marketing hype helps (I am not dissing marketing whatsoever). What I noticed, however, was sites that have some true grassroots fans are climbing the traffic ladder without spikes. Example: dailymotion.com - large European (French/Belgium) base with healthy growth in US viewers as well. Their traffic trend for the last 12 months looks like the ascent on Mont Ventoux. How did this happen?
Initial conclusion: Video sites (other than the top 3) can’t rely on hype or even content alone. They have to earn their viewers by communicating with them - not down to them.
By the way, does anyone have comScore stats on these?
More on this coming soon…
Michael Gracie said,
August 8, 2007 @ 11:27 am
I believe Seth Godin has talked about the PR spiking bit before, and how startups rely on the PR end (sometimes to their detriment - I know I have).
I wonder how much actually gets spent on that avenue, and whether anyone has figured out how to measure it’s true return.
Amanda said,
August 8, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
Yes, numerous times has Seth Godin boldly gone into depth about “when to stick and when to quit.” In his recent book, called ‘The Dip’, Seth writes about what can happen if companies get hung up on such tactics as “throwing more PR at it.”
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Economics of Online Video | Michael Gracie said,
September 10, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
[…] And here’s more opinion regarding online video purveyors’ ability (or lack thereof) to reach critical mass. […]