As more professionally produced content comes online, user-generated video is becoming less interesting to viewers, and accordingly, advertisers. This is what Business Week points in an article.
“People would rather watch content that has production value than watch their neighbors in the garage”, says CEO of VideoEgg.
ManiaTV recently canceled its user generated channels altogether, saying the 3,000 channels didn’t pull in enough viewers and that 80 percent of the users were going to professional content that featured celebrities. Sony’s Grouper.com in July relaunched as Crackle.com, focused only into professional-grade programming.
A research of Burst Media, an Internet ad network, says that viewers are most interested in news videos, followed by movie trailers, comedy sketches, music video, and TV shows. The category that includes clips produced by users placed ninth out of 11.
More and more Hollywood produced clips
Hollywood is flooding the Web with new shows produce specifically for the Net, along with behind-the-scenes content and DVD-like extras of television shows. Original made-for-the-Web series are Quaterlife, Prom Queen, and KateModern.
Traditionally advertisers have been reluctant to trust the user-generated stuff. They feel better aligned with the professional stuff, and that boast that new Web-series. Blinkx’s CEO says advertisers will pay $60-plus per 1,000 views to incorporate their ads alongside professional video content, and they will pay around $7 to associate with user generated videos.
Therefore landscape dominated by user-generated video is turning into one where the most watched content is largely professionally produced.
True opportunities to transform the way companies communicate
By 2011 the revenues for online multimedia business communications technology will grow to $1.1 billion from its 2006 level of $282 million, according to Interactive Media Strategies consulting firm.
The forecast total covers the spectrum of technologies that are needed to make online multimedia presentations a business reality, from content-creation and editing tools to encoding servers and network distribution gear.
”As executives use the technology more frequently, budgets will grow to allow higher-quality tools and services in support of business multimedia,” says this company.
In his view, Cisco is the big game game-changer that looms on the horizon. Its $3.9 billion acquisition of web collaboration king WebEx earlier this year gives Cisco a major platform for pushing a new breed of hosted video services into the mainstream of corporate America by 2009-2010.
SyncTV brings a la carte TV: only pay the channels you want to watch
A new Internet TV service called SyncTV will compete with companies as Joost, Babelgum, and Vuze, as well as paid-for video download stores as iTunes or Amazon Unbox, or even cable TV. SyncTV will allow people to subscribe to a specific channel and watch any program from it, so viewers pay only for the channel they want to watch. The service will cost $2 - $4 per channel a month, and will be offered in home-theater quality (DVD quality).
The service will provide access to content from computers, set-top boxes, game consoles, and other electronic devices, even specially-equipped TV sets. But no more detail is available. It will be available in the first half of 2008.
A la carte approach sounds interesting, but there are a lot of places to watch shows you miss. There is Hulu, NBC Direct, the ABC, CBS, Fox, CW’s network streaming sites, iTunes, Amazon Unbox, Joost…
The three major British terrestrial TV networks –the BBC, ITV and Channel 4- announced last month an initiative, knows as Kangaroo, to develop a combined service for accessing their on-demand services.
Brightcove cancels consumer uploads to its online TV service
Brightcove is changing positions and refocusing to the professional market. After December 17, Brightcove won’t allow consumer uploads to its service. Videos already uploaded to BrightcoveTV will remain available on the site, and videos already embedded will also continue to play.
Videos go interactive
Check out this video clip for a song from the Neon Bible music band. This could be the beginning of a new genre of music videos and even all kind of videos. By placing the mouse-over and clicking, you can control the action of the artist’s hands and other objects on the screen.
