Chicago Video Production Services

Although most user habit data shows that people watching online video generally prefer shorter content, viewers are gradually accepting and consuming longer videos, which in turn is shaping the type of advertisements we'll see attached to online content. According to data in the FreeWheel online video monetization report for Q1 2012, the number of mid-roll advertisements is growing as more people consume longer content. In fact, the growth of mid-roll ads have actually outpaced the rise of pre-roll ads by more than 50%. Even completion rates are looking good, with people more likely to watch a reasonably lengthed mid-roll than go through a pre-roll. Visit ReelSEO for the full analysis of the report. For help with your editing or marketing projects, visit Video One Productions to see what we can do for you.

Among the see of online video hosting platforms (where YouTube is king and Vimeo is cool too), is a business-oriented platform called Vzaar. For $30/month, users can upload their content to Vzaar, and obtain unprecedented control over the security, distribution, and appearance of all your video content. However, until now, anything you host through Vzaar was free to consume by anyone who could find your work. That platform has teamed up with a company called MPP Global Solutions, which gives users the chance to put a paywall before their content. As such, viewers must either pay to see your individual videos, or purchase a subscription to get access to all your content. Asking viewers to pay for content might be a bad idea for some video producers - those making short, viral videos or branded, sales content meant to introduce a product or service. But if video monetization is a part of your business model, if video is the product you offer, perhaps setting up accounts with Vzaar and MPP makes sense. The latter is a major online payment processor who are partnered with some other big online video names like Brightcove, Accedo Broadband and Edit.tv. They also do payment processing for Philips Smart TVs, the Times Online and Playjam (a connected TV social gaming platform). But according to ReelSEO, the company's background might actually make them harder to work with if you're a small business.

... before you can even work with MPP Global Solutions, you need to contact them, get an account set up, and they’re most likely going to take a sizable cut of the monies you accumulate. It’s all very closed-loop in that there is zero information about any of it on the consumer-facing side of the website, zero transparency until you talk to them. That generally means it’s pricey and they only want to work with high volume sites that are going to generate large amounts of revenue. Just my personal feeling about it all, nothing against them per se, but when I see a site like that, it’s the first thing I think. They make you ask so they can find out whether you can afford it or not. So while you can do it with Vzaar and MPP Global Solutions, there’s no clear path on how to do it and no guarantee that you’d qualify to even become an MPP Global Solutions client.

More news on simpler paywall solutions to come in the next few days. For help with all your editing or marketing projects, visit Video One Productions to see what we can do for you.

In the video below, Girish Bettadpur, Sr. Product Manager at Akamai (a cloud-based ecommerce platform) sat down with Kaltura (an open-source video platform) to discuss some of the finer points of online video and the importance of analytics. Girish categorizes video analytics into two parts; context and monitoring. He talks about the effect of cloud-based and wi-fi devices on analytics, and some of other trends we're seeing in digital media that might affect how many eyes reach someone's digital content. For help with all your editing or marketing projects, visit Video One Productions to see what we can do for you.

Last month, YouTube released a free guide called the YouTube Advertiser Playbook, an eBook designed to give content producers some guidance for their online marketing efforts. The document has a lot of great advice on leveraging the social video platform to meet sales goals. In yesterday's Creator Tip, Tim Schmoyer reviews the book and highlights some of its most valuable suggestions. For help with all your marketing or editing projects, visit Video One Productions to see what we can do for you.