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Is Videoblogging In Trouble?
What’s going on in the news/daily show videoblogging space? Check out this list of activity over the last couple of months:
- CBS’ Wallstrip closes
- Mobuzz closes
- CBS’ Moblogic closes
- Leah D’Emilio leaves Mahalo Daily; apparently show reduced to 1x/week Youtube recap
- WebbAlert closes
- Scoble leaves FastCompanyTV
I’ve heard a lot of chatter that daily news review shows are having trouble growing their audiences because the news is typically always a day behind. In today’s "real time" required market, it makes sense that people aren’t interested in checking out the news they already read on a blog the day before. Yet some of the shows listed above are interview and segment shows, not daily video shows and they have also closed up shop.
I’ve also noticed several videobloggers willing to shill for any company that will pay. While overall online advertising is down, video advertising is supposed to be the one area of growth. I assume that most advertisers would rather spend their money on Hulu than on a small daily video show.
Are there any daily news/interview online video shows that are able to consistently generate a large audience and/or revenue?
lol @maggie
I think the game video market is going from strength to strength but they have interesting stuff to watch.
I think Leo is doing good over at twit.tv
Allen, I’ve been doing a video interviews with internet entrepreneurs for a few months. Maybe my experience will help you see why video is suffering online.
I thought it would be dead simple because I’m just doing interviews, but editing video takes forever. I have to import the video, cut it, export it, upload it. And, unlike text, if I make a mistake with video, I can’t erase just that one portion. I have to redo the whole thing.
As you can see, with this kind of process, there’s no way to be first news.
Plus, for all that work, I don’t get any SEO credit. Search engines can’t see it. And even though I try to keep my videos short, most people online like to zip through information. Asking them to sit through even 2 minutes of video can be a big request.
There are many positives to video–for example, it creates a tighter connection with viewers than text–but it’s a tough beast.
Andrew and Allen,
I was going to mention all the point you made in my own comment, but you did such a great job of pointing out the inherent problem of working with video, all that’s left to do is complement your comment. Thanks, you really nailed it, and you have the personal experience to back it up.
BTW, I have watched some of your video’s and I think they are very good. I’ve never felt that they run too long either, but you’re right about the attention span of the average internet viewer. It’s very short indeed.
To answer Allen’s question of a news show that’s doing well and is profitable, is my favorite Beet.TV
what about diggnations – aren’t they pimping some bbq sauce?
An ad on Diggnation costs around 13,000 for a week. I think that at least some shows are still succesful. However, we all recall the show culling that happened there. Perhaps some shows just cannot seem to find enough revenue to be cash flow positive.
Hi Allen,
Video is tough biz to be in. Vlogging started with a ton of hype and excitement, myself included.. I think I still own VlogTV.com and never ended up using it because of time and I saw first hand that in 99% of cases, making online video doesn’t pay. There are a ton of people who do a really great job with creating video, but monetization has always been difficult.
You mentioned that video advertising is a fast growing segment of online advertising.. true. But that has a lot to do with amount of “professional,” for lack of a better word, video coming online. Even still, when you watch hulu, you’ll see a ton of PSA’s on there because they’re not selling through their inventory. That said, until video is cheaper to create and publish online, pre-rolls aren’t going to pay the bills for videobloggers.
About the only thing that can pay the bills is brand integration, and I worked at a video ad network before my current job that dabbled in that… and it was a nightmare. You have to sell a sponsorship before the content is created which is a HUGE risk for advertisers.. I can’t imagine anything like that happening in this economy.
So my answer to your question would be, it isn’t necessarily in trouble because the people still doing it, do it for their love for it. However, they shouldn’t quit their day jobs anytime soon.
Recession and bad times will take its toll. Content which is not fresh will be the first to go out
Allen,
Totally agree with everyone’s 2 cents above – and the main issue is – labor intensive! Unless you are doing a live web cast video such as a Ustream.tv – where there is NO editing of the event or a WYSIWYG type of video – forget it!
Remember that 10 second video you wanted? The amount of editing time to get that to look good – would have been hours for 10 seconds. I only volunteered because I have a rig set up – stand alone computer – that is optimized for video/audio production.
If you don’t have one of those, sure you can edit video and audio on any decent machine, but also unfortunately, you’ll run into a ton of issues and slow downs when that awful word of “rendering” comes into play.
Anyways, video amateur here dropping in my 2 c!
Rex
Allen,
I think you raise a good issue and Andrew thanks for sharing you experience as well. The economy is obviously part of it. I think part of it is that the smart folks making a lot of these video can make more money doing something else and many of them are doing just that.
However, I think the biggest factor is that we have not yet solved the issue of web video in the living room. Boxee seems to be the lead in this category but it is years away from being in a relevant consumer hardware solution. When web video in the living room is main stream, I think video blogging we see a major uptake and we will see the rise of many new startups. I can already see the need for living room media aggregation services. This to me along with the coming adoption of mobile video streaming with change the tide for vloggers.
Kipp
I know I’m a little late on on this, but to repeat what i’ve been saying about video whether in video comments, vlogging etc – the majority of people cannot watch videos on their computers when at work. I nkow everyone wants TV via the internet etc etc but while at work anyone who doesn’t work in tech has a hard time watching videos/listening to podcasts while they are supposed to be working. I get dismissed every time I say it but it’s a sad truth for video and online “noise” content at least for the time being.
PS Allen you’re ignoring me again on twitter… gonna cry ;)