• by Sorosh Tavakoli , August 7, 2013

With the explosive growth in ad spend across programmatic, mobile and video, it's nearly impossible to find a company in the media industry that doesn’t have a growth plan looking something like this: 

[Digital publisher]'s growth plan 2013-2015

- Programmatic 

- Mobile

- Video

Most publishers have mature display ad businesses, and programmatic is a natural extension to this, helping meet advertiser demands while achieving efficiencies and increased yield. Secondly, whether you like it or not, your audience increasingly visits your properties through mobile devices, so you need to make sure you can monetize the audience across mobile environments efficiently.

But what about video?

With display CPMs under heavy pressure and video ad spend growing north of 50%, video is a no-brainer for companies wishing to drive audience engagement and revenues, be they advertisers, publishers or technology companies. So how can publishers tap into this growing video opportunity?

Publishers want to learn how to handle video, but need to solve a number of problems, technical, commercial and operational, first. All too often, they launch something with significant delays and minimum take-up, and then ask themselves why video only accounts for 1% of their revenues.

What happened to the promise of video?

Let's take a step back. TV – the world’s largest ad market, turning over roughly $200 billion annually – is in transition right now as it evolves from broadcast to IP. As this shift happens, the rules change and a new IP-delivered TV landscape is taking shape. This new market consists of broadcasters, publishers, ad networks, YouTube, syndicators, multichannel networks (MCNs) etc. The question is where your business fits in.

This is also where you need to be honest and do the math. Does it make sense to be opportunistic or strategic? Evaluate the overall opportunity coming from the emerging IP-delivered TV ad market, factor in what assets you have and what you can achieve. Simply put, evaluate your status quo. As a publisher you have numerous valuable assets such as an audience, a brand, existing advertiser clients etc.

Look at how those assets can be used as you build  your video strategy, looking at things such as content, distribution, devices and monetization.

Either choice – being strategic or opportunistic ­– can make sense, depending on your assets and ambitions.. If you do want to be strategic about video, plan correctly and add resources accordingly. Ensure the topic has focus and leadership within your business.

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