Not syndicating your online video content yet? You’re missing out. You’ve already done the hard part—publishing compelling video. Now comes the fun part: spreading its reach far and wide across the Web—and monetizing it every step of the way.
The fact is, publishers already want to make your video part of their sites. In a recent State of the Online Video Industry Report prepared by Adap.tv and DM2Pro, publishers cited access to more video inventory as the single most important factor that would influence them to sell more video ads. In other words: the more video they offer, the more ads they can sell against it. Meanwhile, they can also draw more traffic: more visitors, longer time on site, higher virality—all their favorite metrics go up, and so do the ad rates they can command.
A true win-win, video web syndication delivers benefits for both sides of the deal. In addition to helping the receiving site add depth and stickiness to its pages, syndication helps the original content producer drive exposure across numerous online platforms and brings viewers back to its own site, generating traffic and serving as a free and easy form of advertising.
As syndication grows in popularity, several types of partnership agreements have emerged:
- Licensing content, in which distribution partners pay a fee to the content creators for the right to publish the content;
- Ad-supported content, in which publishers share revenues derived from advertising on syndicated content with that content’s producer;
- Free or barter syndication, in which no currency changes hands between publishers and content producers. This requires the content producers to generate revenue from another source, such as embedded advertising or subscriptions.
It seems straightforward enough. And it is indeed simple—if you’re only syndicating to a couple of sites. If you’re serious about monetization, you need a strategy that scales effectively across thousands of sites. Different partners have different ad policies, revenue rules, and supported formats—and if they distribute internationally, the rules and regulations change yet again.
Smart publishers are already ramping up to capture the full potential of the video web syndication opportunity. The key: moving beyond homegrown spreadsheet-based methods to take advantage of the syndication management technologies now coming to market. A single tool can now allow content creators to handle every part of even the largest syndication program—content licensing, partner management, business terms, and reporting on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to thousands of partners—easily and efficiently. New partners can be added quickly, and existing relationships optimized, to continually increase the visibility, traffic, and revenue each new video generates.
In a recent discussion with leading online video syndicator, CineSport, Chief Content Officer, Larry Weitzman, shared some valuable insight on the challenges the company face and the steps they take to solve them. “Syndication is difficult technically in that each publisher has its own system for producing, capturing, uploading, and placing video on their site. We try to integrate seamlessly with each of our publishers so that they can preserve their current workflow, while strategically creating and placing video to maximize user engagement. Contextual targeting of the video is critical. If this is part of a true multimedia approach, the video becomes an organic element of the content, not just an add-on. This requires a great deal of flexibility in our integration. The same is true on the ad serving side. This is where Adap.tv has been extremely helpful. They allow our partner sites to use their own ad server and still gain the benefit of our multiple ad sources in the Adap.tv waterfall.”
Of course, video web syndication also pays off for the remaining members of the online video ecosystem: the viewers whose insatiable appetite and interest have driven the dramatic rise of the medium. Syndication helps these individuals find more video in more places than ever before—while driving value for publishers everywhere they go. Don’t leave your video—or your business—out of the picture.
For a full copy of the State of the Online Video Industry Report (2H 2010), please contact Katherine Ryan. To learn more about Adap.tv’s video syndication solutions and advanced technologies, please contact Henk Van Niekerk. To learn more about CineSport’s innovative web video syndication strategies, please contact Larry Weitzman.