BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
28 Jan 2009

Despite the fact that a lot of stats from online video are out there in public view, there are in fact few available metrics to compare oneself to.

So today we get some stats from others the video content production space, though I’ll be the first to admit that our content is nothing like Revision3 or Next New Networks.  Oh, we also didn’t raise $9M and $23M respectively, but I digress.

Online video studio Revision3 said today its program views are up 140 percent, with 46 million views in 2008 as compared to 19 million views in 2007.  Next New Networks claimed 300 million views in 2008. Yesterday Break reported 35 million plays of its branded content productions “in the past few months.”

WatchMojo.com did 28M streams in 2008, which was up from 13M in 2007, which was a 115% spike.  All-time, we’ve almost hit 50M in 3 years, which I guess is not too shabby.

Of course, it’s worth adding that we don’t give away our content, we have been keeping the lid of syndication (speculative revenue share deals) in favor of licensing deals with guaranteed revenue.  Also, these are audited stats, in the sense that on many sites we don’t have access to reports etc., so we don’t estimate what those streams are.  Lastly, we also have a booming out of home digital signage network, reaching nearly 20M consumers each month in the US.  Again, this number would be higher if we were giving away the content, which we don’t.

More on the challenges of online video monetization:

The real challenge is convincing advertisers to move away from their traditional 30 second spots. Part of that problem is agencies, which are used to TV, where they can quickly spend their clients’ money –  and drive up billing fees — buying millions of impressions in one phone call.

It will be interesting to see if Next New Networks can continue its torrid stream count, so much of it seemed to have come from the Obama Girl gal, and let’s face it, once the honeymoon is over in DC, I doubt she will have as much traction.

I presume our streams will continue to grow quickly as we now have thousands of videos across thousands of touch points.  As per revenues, despite the doomsay scenarios, 2009 is not looking bad at all… though admittedly we’re growing from a small base.  The best part is that we have never raised a penny in VC so unlike Revision 3, we’ve not had to cut any costs or scale back headcount.

To be perfectly honest though, I think that for all video content producers, the challenge will lie in mainstream crossover appeal.  Just because the heaviest video watcher on YouTube might know who you are means zilch in the long term, there are billions of viewers on TV and we need to appeal to this audience, too.