Technology –> Media –> Content –> Advertising
The old adage is that content is king, and as an online media cultist, I still believe it. However, Mike Masnick over at Techdirt makes a compelling argument in stating content essentially equates to advertising in the YouTube era.
Technology companies, for starters, are now media companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.). Being a media company today means creating or aggregating compelling content (via search results, original content, user submitted content, etc.) and selling contextual advertising around it.
The “YouTube era” that Mike talks about means the new age of widely available video content, thanks to widespread broadband adoption and easy-to-use online video content platforms such as YouTube. So in essence YouTube is a central focus of where online eyeballs are at in today’s Internet and how companies will make money from it.
So while many YouTube videos will likely have some form of advertising in the near future (pre-roll, post-roll, rollover, etc.), the content itself is also some form of advertisement.
How money is made off the content-as-advertisement component will be very interesting to see. This is why we’re seeing so much wheeling and dealing – and in some cases law suit flinging – between big traditional media companies and sites like YouTube today.
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