• Advertising Age, Monday, January 26, 2009 12:15 PM

It's a vexing problem for Web video producers: How do you build a loyal audience and keep it coming back? As Advertising Age's Michael Learmonth points out, in the short history of the Web series, producers have struggled to replicate the TV model where audiences come back and even build from the first episode. "Online audiences are spotty, fickle and distracted," says Learmonth, and "even the best web series have trouble getting numbers when they're not getting front-page promotion on a major video portal such as YouTube or MySpace Video."

To illustrate that point, Ad Age asked Web analytics firm TubeMogul to compile a study showing stats for the first eight episodes of the 50 highest-profile Web series available on top video destinations like YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, MySpace, and Yahoo. The results showed a whopping 64% decline on aggregate of the Web series' audience from the first to the second episode. The decline becomes less steep from there, says Learmonth, but it only goes to show that the reason most series don't make it past the tenth episode is that, by that point, there often isn't much of an audience left.

For example, Michael Eisner's production "Prom Queen" went from 405,000 views after episode one to a mere 38,000 for episode two. Brand marketers, of course, want to see guaranteed audience sizes, which means that producers need a better strategy than the "post and spray" approach in the hope that their video goes viral. That means paying for real distribution, instead of buying placement for a limited time on YouTube's homepage.

Read the whole story at Advertising Age »