How video leads to a parallel (and viable) universe for advertisers

This week Dominic Mills looks at the striking opportunities presented by online video, from the geekboy fandom of Machinima as it ups production values to team up with Ridley Scott to the incredible rise of ‘social talent’, where non-celebs are reaching serious online stardom – and presenting brands with a whole new level of audience engagement.

This week, dear readers, I have been exploring the worlds of Caspar Lee and Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella.

You’ve probably never heard of them, and nor had I before last week’s MediaTel Video Upfronts Marketplace. Both are what you might call YouTube phenomena, or what others call ‘social talent’ – i.e. non-celebrities who have achieved fame and currency thanks to video and social media. In that sense, they are totally of the moment.

More interestingly, they are now fully engaged in monetising their currency via advertisers.

If you’re interested in new broadcast models and new advertising strategies (the ads themselves, for the moment, remain sort of as they were), then the world of video is worth a poke around.

And it’s growing exponentially. We are all familiar with the stat about the volume of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. You might also have seen last week’s figures from video search engine Blinkx claiming its revenues will be up 70% plus year-on-year. Blinkx has 35 million hours of video indexed.

The key question for the marketing community is this: can you build an advertising/brand strategy around video? We know Red Bull can, but what about everybody else?

It’s obviously a huge and complex world, embracing everything from catch-up TV to YouTube phenomena like Charlie Bit My Finger and dedicated channels like Machinima (best described as utopia for gamers – a niche world but a mass, global one too.)

In a sense, if you wanted to see what the fragmentation of media means in practice, video is the place to go. Here, everything is exploded into particles – of audience, demographic, geography, time, genre and so on.

Now you might think this mitigates against advertising. And maybe this is why advertisers have shied away from using video other than as an incremental tool.

But is that approach valid for much longer? I would say no – for three reasons: one, increasing professionalisation of the available content out there – so that advertisers are no longer dependent on some schlocky of-the-moment piece of amateur video that becomes an overnight sensation; two, better demand-side platforms, which means the chances of serving the right ad to the right viewer at the right time are improved; and three, the realisation, via video, that niche can be mass.

Which brings us back to the likes of Caspar, Zoe and Machinima.

Zoe, for example, whose channel and blog provide make-up and fashion advice, has 1.07 million YouTube subscribers, almost ten times as many as Cheryl Cole. Her audience: teen girls (i.e. just like her).

Caspar is a South African teenager – think of him as a Harry Styles Lite (if such a thing were possible) – who shoots a weekly video about, well, himself. His channel has 800,000 subscribers, increasing by 100,000 a month, and his videos achieve views of between 500,000 and one million plus. His audience: One Direction fans.

Machinima is, I suppose, where gamers go when they’re not gaming – i.e. to immerse themselves afresh in game culture. It produces tons of content and, if you think this is all amateur rubbish, think again – it’s teaming up with Ridley Scott to create and broadcast 12 sci-fi shorts.

It’s big, and it talks in fluent adspeak – its advertiser offer, for example, includes product placement, branded content, influencer activation and sponsorship. Audience: 15-35 male geeks.

That’s just three examples where you can easily find cohesive and relevant audiences on video. Today, there are probably other, equally powerful, video properties out there, the point being that we may now be reaching a tipping point where video becomes more than just a schedule add-on.

Of course, advertisers have still got to learn to treat it right: a two-minute Caspar Lee video had a 30-second pre-roll on it (for KFC, since you ask). Idiotic or what? But the potential is there.

Footie: second careers for media folk

So there I was on Saturday morning reading about the appointment of investment banker Anthony Fry as chairman of the Premier League. And on the radio they’re interviewing Greg Dyke (in his role as chairman of Brentford FC), shortly to become chairman of the FA.

At first glance, there’s nothing to connect the two apart from a possible mutual hostility: in a previous life, investment banker Fry tried to get Sky to buy Manchester United (yes, these sorts of wacky things happened in the late 90s), a move that was opposed by Dyke, then a director of United and the man fronting up ITV’s efforts to grab football rights.

But that would be simplistic: for Fry is not just an investment banker, but one who specialised in media and telecoms. Given the Premier League’s intent to hoover up as much media cash as it can, getting someone who knows their way round the boardrooms of the big media operators is pretty sound thinking.

Dyke, given his experience with ITV and the BBC, is obviously a media man through and through. Given the FA’s intent to hoover up any cash not taken by the Premier League etc…well you can see where this is going.

What unites the two is their knowledge and experience of the big media world, how it’s changing and their instincts for what threats and opportunities are around the corner.

There are more and more sports for which media money is the most significant source of income. What better than to have someone who knows their way round this world on your side of the table? Football seems to have grasped this early on – the FA’s appointment of Adam Crozier, whose background was in advertising and media at Saatchi and Saatchi, being a case in point. West Ham’s Karren Brady is another (also Saatchis’, then LBC and Sport Newspapers).

Other sports seems to have been much slower at grasping this, other than Wimbledon (the tennis, not the footie team), where former Granada and ITV commercial boss Mick Desmond resides as commercial director. Not a bad exit route for a media executive wanting to try their hand at something new, is it?

Don’t moan about London transport – spend more money

We all know London’s different…but in what ways? A fascinating seminar at City Hall put on by CBS Outdoor (disclosure: chaired by me) and MediaTel attempted to put flesh on the bones with a mix of macro-economics, hard facts and observational insight.

You can see a write up from the event, along with video from BBC Chief Business Correspondent Linda Yueh, here.

But here’s one fact that made me sit up, it’s this: CBS Outdoor is the second biggest contributor of money to London Rail and Underground. So, advertisers, next time you complain about the service or facilities on public transport, the remedy is in your hands: spend more money there.