Media thinks video will save its industry

"To serve advertisers, digital media companies are shifting away from text and pictures toward video, a hard move for small web properties with few resources"
(Brian Feldman/New York Magazine) - 2016-08-28T00:45:0
http://mediagazer.com/160828/p1#a160828p1

#writing #media #business #advertising #video #moronism

good luck. with advertising, old and new media orgs have relied on a seriously flawed business plan for many years. yet the failures seemingly go unnoticed by media orgs. they have to become low quality, high quantity content mills to have a fighting chance.

http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/08/the-video-revolution-in-media-is-already-here.html

It’s been a big, weird year for the media industry. Gawker, the pioneering blog, declared bankruptcy and was sold off to Univision, whose millennial-focused digital endeavor Fusion has been having trouble finding an audience.

The Awl, an heir to a certain version of Gawker, moved to Medium along with a number of other small websites. Medium’s own in-house editorial product, Matter, has turned itself into a … studio? Or something?

BuzzFeed missed its early revenue goals by a wide margin, and has reorganized internally to emphasize video. (A better outcome for employees than at Mashable, where dozens were laid off in April, in preparation for a “strategic shift” toward video.)

Vice launched a cable channel! Which no one is watching. Not that the executives at Disney, who seem likely to purchase the company, mind.

And then there’s Tronc. Tronc! Whatever it is.

What’s going on? At the root of these changes is a change in how digital publishers and advertisers do business.

Selling display ads — banner ads and other advertisements you see alongside articles on websites in your browser — is no longer really lucrative enough to support a business.

At the same time, sponsored ads — article-like pieces of content that are created at the behest, and with the input of, brands — haven’t been able to replace them.

So what’s next? Video ads. And to sell video ads, you need video.