Media companies are pouring resources into video, but it may not be the holy grail for much longer.
As media companies search for new sources of revenue, everyone seems to be focusing on video as the new holy grail. Why? Because video advertising is one of the few remaining places in the media business that is still producing significant amounts of revenue. But how long can that last with the supply of video content continuing to increase exponentially?
Everywhere you look, you can see news and media organizations devoting more resources to video. Mashable recently restructured the entire company and laid off dozens of people so that it could focus more on video, and the New York Times has set up a team just to do Facebook Live video. BuzzFeed has an entire content arm called BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, not to mention several standalone Facebook pages that primarily do video.
The drive to produce more video is being driven by a number of converging factors. One is that traditional display advertising on the web is an increasingly terrible business—the amount of money that a traditional news or entertainment outlet can earn there is minuscule and getting smaller every day. That’s why so many media companies are driven to add pop-ups and viral-marketing “related story” links and other gimmicks.
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