When one thinks of the major players in online video, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, perhaps even Amazon first to mind â€" not AOL.
Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL (pictured, right), and Susan Lyne, the former ABC Entertainment president who was appointed CEO of AOL's Brand Group in late February (pictured, left), are out to change that â€" lured no doubt by lucrative forecasts for online video advertising.
AOL is a small but growing entity in the video space, bringing in around $100 million in video revenue last year, according to Armstrong. (YouTube, by comparison, is estimated to have generated $4 billion that year.)
AOL's video push began in 2010 when the company acquired professional video maker StudioNow and later 5Min, which distributes third-party video clips across various web properties (and which AOL has been able to sell ads on top of). Last year, AOL launched an online video portal, AOL On, which hosts videos from its portfolio of websites, including TechCrunch and Moviefone. It also launched its first live video network, HuffPost Live. Several months later, it struck a deal with YouTube to begin distributing its original videos on the massive, Google-owned video network.
AOL made further strategic steps in video this year, launching a string of on-demand series around well-known personalities, including Nicole Richie, interior designer Jonathan Adler, and The Sartorialist street style photographer Scott Schuman. Episodes are short, typically under five minutes in length, and distributed both through AOL's platform and YouTube.
Also this year, AOL made a big investment on the ad side, acquiring Adap.tv, a platform for buying and selling video ads, for $405 million â€" $90 million more than it paid for The Huffington Post in 2011.
Together, those acquisitions and launches have given AOL much more video inventory and more methods to sell ads against it â€" two things AOL will continue to build on through the end of 2013 and on to next year.
AOL's next big video project is the launch of a second live video channel, AOL Live, slated for later this fall. That its name is similar to HuffPost Live, the 12-hour/day streaming video network AOL's Huffington Post Group launched 14 months ago, is no coincidence.
Like HuffPost Live, AOL Live plans to deliver a mix of live online video each week â€" two hours per weekday to start â€" with a heavy emphasis on viewer interaction. Video will then be cut up and redistributed through various AOL channels. Lyne says that the "vast majority" of HuffPost Live's 100 million monthly views come from the short clips it spins into standalone segments (like this one) or embeds in longer articles that are then shared among friends. The sharing component is critical: She believes five to 10 years from now, most video views will come from such shares.
Where AOL Live plans to differentiate itself from its predecessor is content. While HuffPost Live claims to focus on news and commentary, AOL Live plans to target a younger consumer â€" one more interested in entertainment and humor than news, Lyne says. AOL has recruited producers with a background in entertainment-focused networks like MTV and VH1 to help set the tone. Still, considering how much entertainment and pop culture falls under HuffPost Live's "news and commentary" umbrella, we expect there to be quite a bit of crossover, subject-wise.
Given that the focus isn't news, why does it need to be live?
"It doesn't have to be," Lyne says. "We're starting with a two-hour live show from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. It's a moment when people can actually take a break from work and put on something that's fun and hopefully shareable."
I asked Lyne if advertiser demand for real-time marketing had anything to do with the imperative for live video, but she dismissed the idea. "What's interesting about live is that it's always unpredictable," she says. "Something could end up being unrehearsed and sometimes over the top, something could go wrong. It's why we watch the VMAs."
With all the focus on short â€" short clips, short episodes â€" does Lyne see a future for long form video on the web? Lyne admits she doesn't know. "I don't think we know exactly how this is going to be consumed. We know the old rules are breaking down."
One thing that's also breaking down, she says, is the concept of the channel.
"I don't know anyone who watched a channel anymore," she says. "They watch a show, or follow a personality." She approached a white board and drew a number of app icons on a simulated TV screen. "I think that the likeliest scenario is that you'll turn on your Apple TV one day and you'll see a brand. You'll see YouTube, Breaking Bad. Hopefully you'll see HuffPost Live and AOL Live as well."
Will AOL make it that far? James McQuivey, principal analyst at Forrester, thinks they have a shot â€" at least in drawing ad revenue. "Despite AOL's repeated attempted to become more relevant in video, all of which has faltered, it's worth trying again only because online video is one of the strongest draws for people and it's a great way to increase engagement time which translates almost directly into advertising time."
Image: Rob Kim/Stringer/Getty Images
No comments:
Post a Comment