Future of TV Briefing: Publishers reassess revenue options for short-form shows post-YouTube Originals

That means 8% to 10% of the audience for this year’s Super Bowl watched the game on a minute-long delay (depending on whether you’re using iSpot.tv’s numbers or Nielsen’s, respectively).

Streaming’s share of Super Bowl viewership will likely only grow from here. But for it to close the gap to the point of overtaking linear, it will likely need to close the gap in its lag time.

What we’ve covered

Instagram’s video ad-revenue sharing program has underwhelmed participating publishers:

Instagram started testing sharing revenue with publishers for long-form videos last summer.
Two publishers said they are seeing CPMs around $6, which is a third to half of their YouTube and Facebook ad rates.

Read more about Instagram

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how publishers are focusing on brand sponsors and their own streaming properties to make up for a further diminished short-form buying market.

Shorting the market

The measurement Super Bowl

The streaming Super Bowl

Snapchat’s new revenue-sharing program, Disney+ plus live, measurement execs stand off and more

Shorting the market

The key hits:

YouTube reducing its original programming slate has shrunk the already slim market for short-form shows.

Publishers are looking to brand sponsors as the primary programming patrons going forward.

They are also planning to premiere some original shows on their FAST channels and CTV apps before posting them to platforms like YouTube.

If Quibi’s demise didn’t, once and for all, quell the hope for a robust buying market for short-form shows — a la TV and streaming and with digital video platforms pitching their pocketbooks at producers — whatever flicker of optimism has remained appears to have reached wick’s end after YouTube announced last month it is cutting back on original programming.

“With YouTube Originals leaving and no Quibi, the market’s pretty thin,” said one digital video publisher.

YouTube curtailing its originals program doesn’t herald the overall end of short-form original programming, though. If anything, it indicates a return to the original business model. There remain video ad revenue-sharing programs on YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat (and still yet maybe one day on Instagram). There’s Snapchat’s original programming business. And most of all, there are brand sponsors.

“Brands buying the media around originals and integrations into originals, that’s where the biggest spike has to come,” said a second publisher.

In a way, this can work out in publishers’ favor. For as much as platforms like YouTube are the epicenter of their video businesses at the moment, many publishers are pushing into streaming with their own channels on free, ad-supported streaming TV services like ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV and even with their own connected TV apps. For both outlets, original programming will be what makes or breaks these emerging businesses, and the publishers were not in position to take the shows sold to Quibi or YouTube to prop up the publishers’ own streaming properties (at least not in the near future).

“We’re definitely putting a bigger focus on our [streaming] channel and expanding the places it’s distributed,” said the second publisher. As part of that heightened focus, this publisher plans to premiere at least one new original show per quarter on its streaming property. Previously it had debuted shows on digital video platforms like YouTube first.

A third publisher with a video business currently oriented around the digital video platforms said they are similarly planning to test out airing some original shows exclusively on their CTV apps for a period of time. “This is a long-term bet on platform audiences gravitating towards CTV,” this executive said.

To be clear, though, publishers would prefer to have an active buying market for short-form shows. Not only would it provide an alternative revenue source to the traditional ad revenue-sharing arrangements with platforms like YouTube and Facebook, but also it …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron