Vancouver VOIP company nabs NBA deal; shares secrets for monetizing online content

The fact that Vancouver-based video-over-IP company Broadbandtv Corp. just landed a deal to promote the National Basketball Association (NBA) on Google Inc.’s YouTube tells us the company must be doing something right. In an interview with Tech Media Reports, the firm’s CEO provides pointers for content owners looking for a leg up in the digital world. “Instead of monetizing one copy of an asset, let’s monetize thousands of copies,” says Shahrzad Rafati. “Why focus only on the YouTube channel? Monetize all the legitimate copies of the clips across YouTube.” That was one major piece of advice she offered in an interview just days after Broadbandtv announced the NBA win. Over the course of a year, Rafati’s team will help the league place new video highlights on YouTube, where the NBA Channel attracts more than 290 million visitors seeking basketball clips. For Rafati, YouTube success begins by using the users: in agreements with publishers, Broadbandtv is often called upon to hunt down pirated copies of content and either wipe them out or take them back. “If it’s in its original format, we place an ad right next to it and we do a revenue share with the publisher,” Rafati says. “We’re reducing piracy...but we’re also helping publishers leverage the user base.” This gives content holders the opportunity to ride the viral express: if there are numerous pirated copies, why not leave them where they are and monetize them through advertising? It’s better than fighting the tide and trying to convince YouTube visitors to come to a specific YouTube channel to watch content there exclusively. “The majority of the content you find through searching on YouTube,” Rafati estimates. “It’s not about users going to a specific channel.... There are so many channels, and YouTube has thousands and thousands of partners.” Optimizing content for YouTube’s search function is critical, she says. “When you upload content on YouTube, it gives you the opportunity to input tags.” These inform the users’ searches – and unless the tags are given serious attention, the content could be lost among the millions of videos that YouTube offers. Content owners looking to contain their offerings in a YouTube channel to supplement searches should also get the promotion machine running. There are thousands of channels, and “your channel is going to get lost” if it isn’t promoted, Rafati says. Do YouTube and other video sites threaten the TV industry? “I’d say no. I’d say it’s a complement. You want to increase awareness of your content. This is basically another way of marketing the content, making it available everywhere.” It certainly doesn’t spell an end to exclusive broadcast rights – although it does pave the way for a slightly new definition of “broadcast.” Consider Hulu LLC, an online joint venture between NBC and Fox, where U.S. web surfers can access TV shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Saturday Night Live, and Family Guy. “They hold onto their products, because they own the platform, and they’re not going to give their rights to any other platform – including YouTube,” Rafati says. “At the end of the day, content owners are the kings. If they own a platform similar to Hulu, they’re going to hold on to the rights.” Publishers usually deal with third-party web distribution mechanisms on a non-exclusive basis, Rafati says – even large companies wouldn’t sign an exclusive deal with YouTube – why shut out Yahoo? The emerging formula sees publishers distributing content in windows of time, she explains. A publisher might use its own platform for the first month, and then reach out to other platforms for set periods of time in sequence. Content owners also need to consider the tools at their disposal for cleaning up unauthorized content. All tools are not created equal. For instance, YouTube’s internal fingerprinting technology lets publishers identify authorized content, which helps separate the unauthorized copies later on. “YouTube’s tools are a lot more efficient,” Rafati says. “If you’re a third party with your own technology...even if you have fantastic fingerprinting technology, it doesn’t mean you can go out and look up Google’s servers and find all the other copies of the content. Google’s not going to let you look up all of its servers. It’ important to work with a company like YouTube and leverage their tools, because they’re going to generate the best results.”

Vancouver VOIP company nabs NBA deal; shares secrets for monetizing online content

News | 08/24/2009 4:21 pm EDT

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