Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) is hosting an industry event titled “How to commercialise video?” here in Sydney in September 2009.
From the event description I expect that the focus will be on streaming video (via the web or mobile phone). Part of the motivation for this focus comes from a recent Nielsen report that “streamed video content has risen 129% to 4.2 million viewers” as cited on the event’s website. I am not quite sure what to make of these 4.2 million viewers? The number still seems a little small to me so I assume the 4.2 million is for the Australian market only, but even then it still seems a little small. The AIMIA event is looking to attract the whole vertical of video from content and publishing through to the streaming video technology providers.
The challenges in the streaming video market are not unique and instead are common to all media formats (video, audio, news etc).
The common challenge lies in how to monetize the web as a distribution channel when consumers almost exclusively want content for free.
Media content however can not be created for free (except perhaps social media but that is for another blog post).
Streaming video is growing – but why?
- Increased rates of broadband adoption (especially to the home).
- Video encoding software is improving.
- Video experience on mobile phone platforms has greatly improved.
- Growth of Content Delivery Networks (CDN).
The above are all technology drivers which could be classified as “sustaining technological improvements“, that is, the improvements offered by the technology could reasonably be expected to be derived given time. More importantly is how and where did the adoption of digital video start:
Adoption: Peer to peer file sharing technology brought free media content into the home.
Obviously corporations hate peer to peer file sharing sites that redistribute their content to consumers for free and have attempted repeatedly to shut them down, for example the recent pirate bay legal battle.
So in light of the above how does a corporation make money via streaming video content? The quick answer is ads, lots of annoying ads and then reducing the ads based on subscription models. However the truth is no one really knows the answer and the purpose of the AIMIA commercialising video event is to share ideas amongst the interested parties.
The event details are:
- AIMIA’s NSW Commercialising Video 2009 (Sydney)
- Thursday, 24th of September, 2009
- At the Establishment (map).
