Monetizing Video Tips and Concepts from an Unexpected Place

I know this might seem a little bizarre but I promise you there is nothing gross or untoward about this article… there is only good information.

To me, it is an example of how interesting concepts can come from unexpected places.

So with that in mind, please check out what I saw the other day at a Japanese restaurant in New York City.

Talk about your captive audience… now whether you think this is brilliant advertising or ridiculous (there are good arguments for both), I would like to use this image as a visualization for how to monetize a message.

What? Yeah… I am going there.

The monetization of this is pretty clear. The guy is well … occupied… so if you stick a message in front of him there is a good chance he will read it. Add in the fact that the message may have something to do with what he is trying to do and DING DING DING you have a winner!

Online video can be this simple. A well optimized video will pop up in organic searches or even be delivered to a target audience through an AdWords for Video campaign (to name just two strategies).

But this is where the online world provices even more opportunities to monetize.

So, let’s say you get a bunch of views on a video… suddenly the place where that video sits is considered a high traffic area and could be used to sell ads. Then, you could leverage that traffic and increase your audience on other sites. This could be done by using social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc) or a newsletter or a blog a customized landing page or even website. More begets more. You could even charge a membership fee in order to access your unique content.

All the studies are showing whoever your audience is… they potentially could be watching your video (Click the video below for more on this).

There is also a ton of money being made on the back end of online video. One example here is bandwidth. The more traffic a site gets, the more video it has to feed, the more bandwidth it is using. That is how companies like Brightcove, Kaltura, etc… add to the coffers of their subscription plans. In fact, while I was roaming the floor of Streaming Media East one company spokesperson told me they are really in the “bandwidth business.”

In the meantime, other companies see an opportunity here and are looking to shrink the file size of the videos that would be streamed on Brightcove, Kaltura, etc…. Because if the quality can remain high but the file sizes can be cut in half then the videos would conceivably rack up half of their current bandwidth budgets. An interesting sub-strategy in the online video game.

So why is the video marketing guy yammering on and on about how the online video business is monetizing?

Well let’s go back to that picture on the bathroom wall.

Before anyone agreed to put that ad in a bathroom, those involved in the decision understood where the ad would live and how the audience would likely interact with it.

So using the same logic, if you understand the business environment for online video (i.e. how it is being monetized) it will help you get the most lift out of how you want to use online video.

Here’s another way of looking at it (going back to the men’s room picture).

The same concept would not really work in a women’s bathroom for a number of reasons … perhaps the real moral of this story is that women are just a little more evolved then men after all.