- Moderator: Jamison Tilsner, Tilzy.TV
- Jim Lauderback, Revision3
- Herb Scannel, NextNewNetworks
- Alex Blum, KickApps

Tilz: For most video producers, its still a passion project, but starting to see it as a medium that is attractive to advertisers.

Herb, NNN: Creates micro-niche networks.

Alex: KickApps is a technology provider. Makes it easy for everyone to introduce video on their sites, wrapped with a full suite of social media experiences. Key to the platform’s capabilities is that developers can access the tools on a self-service basis. Now powering 22,000 sites.

Jim, revision3: internet TV network with 15 different shows. Mostly male 18-35 audience who have abandoned TV as their main form entertainment.

Herb: BarelyPolitical.com is a political satire community that produced the Obama Girl video. Herb showed the follow-up video for Mike Gravel, who apparently is still running for president, doing the SoljaBoy dance. ThreadBanger.com features content for fashion designers and manufacturers, and was able to incorporate some product placement sponsorships for sewing machines. Lastly, IndyMogul is for independent film producers, which Columbia Pictures approached for content integration as well. Hysterical video on the world of illegal underground board game playing. Did you know there was a steroid problem in Hungry Hungry Hippos?

Tilz: How did the content channels develop?
Herb: Three different paths of development. Commissioned a show and built a network around it. IndyMogul began when a friend of an employee sent in a demo. Lastly, Ben Relles did a few videos on Obama Girl, and NNN bought that company and brought them under the NNN umbrella.

We looked at communities that were robust on the internet. With the elections coming up, the political satire space was a natural. For Threadbanger, most of the fashion shows are aimed at high level, high fashion. The sewing machine “sew off’ happened organically. Counted on there being an advertiser base that was endemic to the content, and advertisers that would want to reach the audience. NNN can be bought horizontally and vertically.

Jim, Rev3: We do a lot of things that are similar to NNN, going after niche markets. But we’ve been more focused on longer form programs that people make real time in their schedule to watch. Our roots were around technology, so our early programming was tech based. Built a strong base of programming around that, and then built up to compliment that. Next channel was music, then internet culture, but we don’t see automotive as a niche that we are going into, or at least not going into next. In addition to the content, its all about the talent. DiggNation is popular because of the chemistry between the hosts. “99% of our audience has unaided advertising recall. 48% of our audience has made a purchase.”

Tilz: How do you handle the 3rd party advertising when you syndicate content to other sites like BlipTV?
Jim: The integrated sponsorships travel with the content, but we work with the publishers to provide category exclusivity for our sponsors before we provide the content. So there won’t be a Victoria’s Secret ad when we syndicate content that is sponsored by Body By Venus, for example.

Alex, KickApps: Powered a hip-hop American Idol style contest.. Wyclef Jean picked the ultimate winner. Cingular Wireless paid premium dollars in order to reach that market.

Alex: We spend time with advertisers and agencies to let them know that projects and content like this are pretty easy to create. The costs and time in developing an experience like that today are minimal.

Tilz: Why did Rev3 and NNN choose to develop your own tech instead of using one of the other platforms?
Jim: We’re all HD, and wanted to control the user experience. We are both downloads and streams. Our audience wants DIVX and H264, so we needed much more control.
Herb: We also wanted to control the experience. We work towards being compatible with as many other platforms as possible.

Tilz: How do you ensure that your destination is the premiere destination for watching yoru content, and not your syndication partners?
Herb: We thought that the best way to “birth” brands would be to super-distribute content. We aligned ourselves with a number of partners to make sure we were where our audiences were. While bigger media companies were trying to keep control, we wanted to give our users what they wanted. The website would be the place where people who want a deeper community experience would go. We focused on the communities, rather than the destination.
Alex: There are 3 things that we advise our clients. Syndication, viral syndication through widgets that can be easily snagged by your audience and put it out on your behalf. Then people can use your website for a deeper experience that you can’t provide out there on the web. But it allows your fans to be your best sales people. Many of our clients are seeing as much traffic driven through the widgets as through SEO.

All of our web based tools are made for average web developers, but we’ve got WYSIWYG creation tools.

Jim: We liked having a destination website to expose people to other content in our network, but we understand that it is “anywhere, anytime, any device, any service.” When it comes to video online, you can’t control the experience. Syndication is about discovery. That’s where they’ll find the content. But when they want to join the community, they do that back at our site.

Tilz: how meaningful is the revenue?
Herb: Starting to get more meaningful. YouTube is the iPod of the video business. We’re advocates of the creation of a video syndication marketplace. The video syndication space is a collaborative space. All of us are in the game of building a marketplace.

Tilz: CPMs on your networks and cross distribution platforms?
Jim: Still feeling our way through that. $80-$100 CPMs on sponsorship.
Alex: Clients of ours are seeing extraordinary CPMs for certain verticals like auto and health. In the range of $70-$80. If you’ve created a social media destination, you can learn a lot about your audience. You can use all that information to inform intelligent adserving.

Tilz: Is there a magic threashold?
Herb: We strive to get a million views per month per channel. But some endemic advertisers like the community and will be willing to pay for it because of the depth of interaction and engagement of the community.
Alex: Advertisers need to understand that the niche oriented sites are made up of influencers, and you need to reach them.
Jim: We’ve been very successful with CPA as well. When you pick the right advertiser for the audience, you can do very well with CPA.

Audience: Are CPMs artificially high because of a still growing audience?
Alex: CPMs will go up because of targeting. There will be more experiences availale, but the ad dollars will continue to flood in. We’re continuing to see the migration of ad dollars. The migration of those dollars will create more opportunities.
Jim: If advertisers want to reach your audiences, then you can keep those CPMs high, or even higher. If you made content for CIOs and had 150 of them in a room at any time, you could have $1000 CPMs and be worth it.

Question: Optimizing for search engines? Is SEO as much of a factor with niche video?
Alex: Viral syndication is an alternative to SEO. In many cases, SEO has a small impact on what you are trying to accomplish.
Jim: the challenge across the board is discovery. Super distribution is one way. But 70% of all internet experiences start with a search query. So you can own or create your own “channel” through smart SEO.

Question: Measurement?
Herb: Freewheel provides the opportunity to dynamically insert advertising into your content across your super distribution channels. You can lay over Visible Measures technology and really create a lot of metrics to look at. There are plenty of technology solutions out there. But remember, for 30 years, Nielson data was completely unvalidated.
Jim: Freewheel is becoming the DoubleClick of online video. You can consolidate all of your super distribution into one report.