Commentary

Location, Visibility Is Everything -- Even In Video

When you live in New York, you hear many times that it’s all about location. You can choose to have a big apartment far from the main area in the city, or a smaller apartment in the Village. You can have a tiny restaurant in the Village, serving 1,000 people a day -- or a bigger place outside of the city, with less access to customers.

So location is everything for retail and restaurants – but switching industries, let’s talk online video.

So what is the most important thing when building a video strategy?

Is it the number of videos you have available on your site? 100, 1,000, 100,000?

Is it the CPM you can get when selling videos? $7, $15, $30, more?

Is it your SEO capabilities to drive organic audiences from search to video pages?

Is it your relationship with advertisers?

Is it the video content management system you’re using? HTML5?

Is it the supporting iOS App you have?

Is it the recommendation system you integrate on your site?

Is it your supporting YouTube channel? Number of subscribers?

When thinking about starting to build a video business, it’s similar to choosing a place for your restaurant. Location is everything, and having people know you have food for them to eat can make or break your business.

If people don’t know they can satisfy their hunger at your place, even if it’s a tiny restaurant in the Village, they will never get a chance to try your food. The size of your restaurant, the quality of your service, or even the quality of your food -- all are important, but none of them matters as much on day 1 as getting people in the door.

No people = nothing to work with, slow growth.

Some people = something to work with, still risky, a chance to succeed.

Video is going to be a big part of our future for at least two main reasons:

(1) Display is tanking -- it’s only responsible to build future CPM alternatives

(2) Web traffic is shifting to the mobile Web, and we need all the help we can get to monetize that. High CPM video traffic can definitely help.

My advice is to start as early as you can to get a handle on your video strategy. Publishers who watch their competition winning video while they don’t may face financial disadvantage that can affect their success.

Start by prioritizing tasks that can help educate your audience that you’re a video business, even if it’s a little restaurant in the Village to start :)

Good luck !

2 comments about "Location, Visibility Is Everything -- Even In Video".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Paul Calento from TriVu Media, April 2, 2013 at 2:32 p.m.

    Video works because of a combination of "time spent" and less clutter. Similar to the "display is tanking" issue, I suspect that pre-roll on short-form video will out perform multiple mid-roll spots in long-form content for similar reasons. Online video can provide broadcast-style outcomes, but the form it takes will likely be different. I'm betting on short-form.

  2. Pete Austin from Fresh Relevance, April 3, 2013 at 4:50 a.m.

    1,000 customers a day is not a tiny restaurant. Assuming you get 1 group of 3 customers per table for breakfast and the same for lunch, plus 2 groups for the longer evening session, and no restaurant runs to full capacity, that would be over 100 tables! @Marketers: please don't manufacture examples from business sectors that you don't know.

Next story loading loading..