• by Matt Brummett , Op-Ed Contributor, December 7, 2015

How can publishers monetize video assets beyond YouTube and Facebook?

First of all, I want to point out an important distinction within that seemingly simple question: Unless the publisher creates their own video content, they have no monetization opportunity with YouTube or Facebook.  

It strikes me as strange that time and time again, I see examples of publishers integrating YouTube videos with ads they make no money from whatsoever. 

The way I see it, these big platforms don’t provide a real video strategy for publishers that do not create their own video content. They focus only on the content creator when it comes to ad revenue sharing, and do little to nothing for the many thousands of small and medium-sized publishers figuring out creative ways to incorporate video into their content strategy.

But for publishers creating video content, of course YouTube and Facebook should be key cornerstones of their video monetization plan, but it would serve their best interests if they don’t simply stop there. 

In fact, there has been a lot written recently about whether playing ball with the big platforms is actually beneficial to publishers since there is undoubtedly a lack of control they experience in doing so. 

Specifically, the risk posed by the seemingly arbitrary changes made by these platforms to their algorithms that can dramatically affect publisher traffic numbers further validates the idea of looking beyond the big platforms.

Because of these two behemoths taking up so much space and having such enormous scale, it is easy to forget there is a significant long tail out there with highly engaged users that can be vital, complementary elements to extending a content-creating publisher’s audience.

Let’s not forget we operate in a very diverse and fragmented online content universe these days, even though many people still think like the pre-digital world when three or four major TV networks ruled. YouTube and Facebook are not the end-all, be-all. 

Consider most people, in addition to YouTube and Facebook, visit about 96 different Websites per month and have 10 smaller sites or so they consume regularly. This fragmentation is typically a result of sharing from Facebook and other social platforms, where we end up with a large amount of one-off article level consumption across many sites.  

As a content-creating publisher, getting video embedded into third-party sites can have a demonstrable impact on revenue because of this fragmentation. 

For advertisers, it increases the breadth of choice in engaging with their customers in highly premium environments.  And when I say “premium” I define it as content environments with a distinct point-of-view that facilitates a highly engaged user experience.  

In fact, one could argue that such broad vehicles as YouTube and Facebook offer much more uneven, unwieldy levels of quality when it comes to a user experience perspective.  

This diversified distribution strategy would also allow publishers to score points with brands for offering their messages on platforms that are in many cases more cooperative as it relates to brand safety and data-sharing.  

YouTube is notorious for not providing advertisers enough control of where their ads show up, and with a lot of YouTube content still user-generated and sketchy, brands can often find their ads juxtaposed to inappropriate content.   

So, back to the long tail.  Publishers need to diversify distribution channels. How should they go about it?  Tribune Media recently introduced their own video distribution network they fully control outside of the big platforms. 

Frequency, an L.A.-based company, facilitates video content placement across mobile devices, DISH set top boxes and Connected TV platforms. Both are great examples of monetizing video assets beyond YouTube and Facebook.

There is a world beyond YouTube and Facebook and it would behoove publishers to open up and diversify their video monetization strategy.