Online video consumption trends for 2013
It's that time of year when 'prediction' articles are found around every corner, in every journal, and in every sector. Here, Jason Miletsky, CEO for MyPod Studios, offers you the year's key predictions for an area of the online world that is increasingly touching - even influencing - the strategies and budgets of marketers the world over: online video consumption.
According to Miletsky, the term "this is the year of online video" will be written and said at least 35% more often in 2013 than it was in 2012, and there are good reasons for his confidence in the media for both marketing and entertainment purposes. For example:
- When it comes to video advertising, the RTB (real time bidding) market will make significant contributions to evolving how media buyers purchase online ads. But it won't come at the expense of ad networks, which have been clever enough to spot the trend in its early stages, and have had a head start on developing new technologies to take advantage of RTB's momentum. Watch for some of the largest networks to roll out with RTB products themselves and take control of the market.
- Branded content production will be on the rise, but not enough to grab headlines or the kind of attention this trend will deserve.
- More HTML5 video ads will be available, so viewers can complain about having to wait for free content on mobile devices as well as on their desktop computers.
- The corporate world still faces two ongoing problems: higher taxes and a continued feeling of insecurity. This translates into lower corporate spending across the board and, when that happens, traditionally the marketing budget is the first to be cut. So how will this turn into a deluge of pre-roll ads for the online community? Well, online video advertising is an effective, lower-cost marketing option, so companies with smaller advertising budgets will pull back from TV advertising and instead divert their funds into online avenues. Unfortunately, however, those same smaller budgets may also keep them from producing new content, so the increased activity might well include a rehash of older, recycled video that was produced in 2012 and before.
- Finally, ambitious commercialisation projects such as YouTube's 100 new channel experiment will quietly fade away. This year we'll probably hear less and less about it as a sobering truth becomes evident: nobody really seems to care about initiatives like this. After an initial interest by curiosity seekers, the concept of tuning into premium videos on YouTube might pique people's interest for a while, but it would be too awkward to be sustainable. YouTube's brand is chiselled in stone as a network of amateur videos, powered by amateur videographers (think 'Charlie Bit My Finger', and cats falling off things, squeezing into things, or torturing puppies). In the end, it seems unlikely that YouTube will be able to break free of its own brand.
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