The Ala Carting of Video on the Net - Will it lead to disaster? - Blog Maverick:
So where does this leave independent video content on the Internet? Right in the hands of Google and Youtube and black and white hat SEOs.
The ala carting of video on the net will benefit those who enable the search for content and can monetize that search. The economics of supporting content will force independently produced Internet content to be dumbed down to levels that create a perfect match for Youtube. There will be SEOs that come up with arbitrage solutions that will drive traffic to parked videos. Content creators will partner with SEOs and create budgets that reflect the CPMs they can earn in and around the video hosted on Youtube against the costs of the SEO driving traffic to the video. SEO support will be the only even marginally effective way to create baseline traffic to a video/show.
Who could have guessed that creating financially successful video on the net would require the same marketing skills as driving traffic to parked domains?
That’s pretty much what’s happened with my former employer, and why design and UX don’t matter to them. Robots don’t care what the page looks like. And that’s the problem when you value statistical growth over actual human growth. But since advertisers value the former, and video production requires significant capital output, I have no solutions for when revenues are required very early in a very young market. All I know is no-one expected to make money with free open-source browsers or search either. I see a near-future convergence in the media industry that includes some market attractors that redefine the game and leave a few people very wealthy. But they will be the people who set themselves up early, putting a lot on the line to be there when it happens…with actual human audiences.