In this guest post, 90 Seconds VP of global revenue Daniel Littlepage talks to why the video and TV production industry is in desperate need of an overhaul when it comes to creating content…

We need to address the elephant in the room. The high cost to brands, advertisers and broadcasters due to archaic models of content creation, which lack efficiencies for the modern age of video.

Let’s break it down.

Creating content for brands has never been an easy task even for broadcasters, with in-house  production teams often acting as an internal agency to facilitate the creation of TVC’s for many advertisers. This has always been a manual process that has ultimately meant the implementation of large internal production teams with its own, often expensive, headcount costs that can’t easily be scaled up or down.

This has created a flow-on effect, with networks being forced to charge brands and advertisers a premium price for the creation of TVC’s in order to cover their own overheads, all whilst the media landscape continues to fragment further increasing the challenges for linear broadcasters to maintain their current market share.

This has put many advertisers who have a limited budget or don’t know how to produce broadcast-quality content in an awkward position. For many SME’s, when adding the media spend to the cost of production, makes television advertising unattainable and therefore their focus has shifted to other channels including social where not only the success of campaigns can be easily measured, they are generally more affordable as assets can be easily repurposed to spec and be more targeted to the audience they ideally would like to reach.

Things were challenging enough for television networks when they had one linear broadcast channel to work with before networks needed to evolve to multi-channel and on-demand services. However, the shift to digital and online channels, streaming services and catch-up television has created additional pressure for internal production teams to produce a larger volume of content that can stand on its own and compete, no matter the channel.

There is no doubt this is an increasingly big issue for brands with smaller budgets who need to scrutinise every cent spent as well as ensuring an adequate ROI can be achieved from these campaigns. It has become an even bigger challenge for networks who are under an extreme amount of pressure to produce a high volume of good quality content on a shoestring budget with increasing overheads attached to the production process.

How are networks and broadcasters expected to compete when production budgets are the same or even shrinking, and the expected outputs are substantially larger?

There is a need for networks and publishers to address this industry-wide challenge and think creatively to solve the issues of high production costs, scalability of both the team and production, inconsistency in the quality of content creation and clunky workflows.

For broadcasters who adopt a more efficient content model, such as Nine and their new 9Voyager platform, the ability to reduce operating costs whilst creating high quality broadcast assets become very real.  However, media broadcasters do need to look outside the square and be prepared to change their traditional ways if they are really going to get to the core of the issue.  Utilising creator marketplaces like 90 Seconds, who combine cutting edge workflow technology with a global professional creator community, is a great way to revolutionise content production, reduce costs and maximise efficiencies for leaner more profitable organisations. Leveraging an API integration into a broadcaster’s infrastructure means a seamless workflow and customer journey that makes the process faster, higher quality and more scalable both in volumes and geographical locations.

In Australia alone there are over 2 million SME’s who can potentially benefit from linear and multi channel broadcast advertising if the entry price is lowered. Using technology solutions including workflow tools dramatically reduces the cost for both the network and advertiser whilst offering increased value and faster creation of video assets for brands to capitalise on video content trends, including stories. In addition, this technology unlocks a brand-new market of advertisers ready and willing to work with broadcasters who have never before been able to create top-quality content cost effectively.

For the networks who aren’t able to invest in a platform such as 9Voyager there are a number of solutions that can still be implemented to support this industry-wide change. Broadcasters can explore the option of building an internal workflow tool to streamline their processes, or simply partner with technology players who are already facilitating these services both in Australia and around the world.  There’s a reason why the world’s tech giants Facebook, Google, AWS and Microsoft are all investigating content workflows and looking more and more to creator marketplaces to scale their video delivery to their platforms.

With more competition than ever before to claim a piece of the advertising pie, broadcasters who don’t innovate and change the way they create content will run the risk of being left behind by those companies who make the advertising process more efficient and cost-effective for brands big and small.