Digiday Research: Publishers are lukewarm on market for short-form video
Key takeaways:
- Only 24 percent of publishers say they are optimistic about the market for short-form video.
- U.S. publishers are slightly less optimistic that European publishers.
Video, once hailed as the digital media industry’s only hope, has failed to live up to the lofty expectations industry “experts” placed on it. Several companies that bet heavily on it have either missed revenue targets, been sold for a fraction of previous valuations, or folded entirely.
Against that dour backdrop, Digiday surveyed 111 publishers at Digiday Video Summits in Scottsdale and Amsterdam last month to gauge their optimism around short-form video. Their responses can be described as lukewarm at best, with just 24 percent of publisher respondents saying they are extremely or very optimistic, and 26 percent saying they aren’t. U.S publishers were slightly less optimistic than their European peers. Only 18 percent of U.S. publishers labeled themselves as optimistic compared to 30 percent of European publishers.
Monetizing short-form video content purely through advertising has proven untenable for most publishers, and only more difficult in the wake of changes made to Facebook’s news feed.
Just as demoralizing has been the demise of several video services that were once prolific buyers of publishers short-form video series. Comcast-funded Watchable operated on a revenue sharing model with as many as 30 publishers and had previously funded exclusive content with Refinery29 and PopSugar, for example. However, with views per video reported to be in the thousands it was clear that short-form video programming was not working.
Go90 now faces a similar fate after Verizon announced its closing the platform on July 31st, shortly after the Digiday survey was conducted. Like Watchable, G090 had spent heavily on acquiring content from publishers for the platform only to fail to find an audience. Both platforms’ respective collapse highlights the declining market for short-form video.
There is some small cause for publishers to be optimistic about the market for short-form video. Both Netflix and Amazon are looking at acquiring the rights from publishers to host their short series. Meanwhile Facebook has also opened up its Watch platform to all publisher’s videos. Facebook’s announcement gives publishers another destination for their content beyond their owned sites and YouTube, even if it’s too early to tell whether Facebook’s bet will successfully attract an audience.
-
French advertising organizations lodge complaint with competition regulator over Apple privacy changes
The coalition of trade bodies allege Apple's upcoming changes, related to its identifier for advertisers, are a sign of it leveraging its dominant position to distort competition.
-
‘Great position to steal share’: As use-it-or-lose-it ad spending picks up, TikTok emerges as an unlikely beneficiary
TikTok could emerge as one of the unlikely winners during the end-of- year scramble from advertisers to dump as much of their media dollars as possible.
-
CNN, Tastemade and ForwardPMX are Digiday Marketing and Advertising Awards Europe shortlisters
As an unprecedented health crisis has swept across the globe, marketers and advertisers across Europe have been forced to communicate with consumers in unprecedented ways.
-
SponsoredBrands are tapping gameday energy to drive engagement with content on social
As the world adjusts to the new normal, sports and entertainment publishers are faced with a challenge — with live audiences no longer able to take their seats at stadiums and arenas, how do they get passionate fans involved in the energy of the moment on social media? From the NBA to MTV, publishers had to […]
-
Bloomberg Media tunes up ABBA to break down barriers between its ads and subscriber businesses
The business news publisher's ad ops and product groups now sit in the same organization as its subscriptions team.
-
The 74’s publisher Jim Roberts on bridging equality divides in education and making trust bonds with audiences
One of The 74's central focuses before the pandemic was the achievement gap in America's education system.
