Monday, February 12th, 2007
Introducing do-it-yourself advertising
I used to run a blog back in the day. It was about politics and stuff. Don’t go trying to find it, I never put my name on it. It was pretty popular, though, and it made me money. It was kind of shocking to me that my blog made money because my content was politically charged — it was kryptonite to major brand advertisers.
Since my content was kryptonite to brands I had very few options in terms of monetizing the blog I poured my heart and soul into… and I turned to my audience for support. I ended up making thousands of dollars through a combination of PayPal donations and Amazon.com affiliate links.
A few weeks ago Phil Torrone from MAKE stopped by the blip.tv office and started talking about his experience with BMW Films, a hugely successful project that made money by selling BMW cars. Phil and Bre Pettis wanted to do the same thing with MAKE — he wanted the (most excellent) MAKE Podcast to make money by selling magazine subscriptions, do-it-yourself kits and tickets to events like Makerfaire.
As Phil and I talked we realized that videoblogging was missing an essential tool that text blogging always had — the ability to solicit donations, the ability to advertise your own product, the ability to make money in ways that don’t involve brand advertisers. In many ways the videoblogging world has leapfrogged the traditional blogging world by offering easy access to great advertisers and the money that comes from that, but in doing so we forgot the fundamentals.
That’s why I’m so excited about blip.tv’s new do-it-yourself (DIY) advertising platform. We’re changing the way videoblogs can make money. Starting today you can e-mail the blip.tv staff an image you’d like to run as a postroll ad on your own videos. Just include the image, the URL you’d like the image to link to and a list of what videos you’d like to run it on. Soon after that we’ll be offering an interface within the blip.tv dashboard itself which will allow you to assign your own ads to your own videos.
MAKE is the first to use our new DIY platform (as well they should be, since they’re the guys who came to us with the idea in the first place). GALACTICAST is next — they’ll be using DIY advertising to promote their totally brilliant pledge drive. Where do we go from here? The sky’s the limit. Advertise t-shirts and other merch directly related to your show. Throw up some amazon.com affiliate links. Make money the old-fashioned way! And, of course, don’t forget about blip’s open advertising marketplace (which brings CPC-based and CPM-based advertisements from tons of partners straight to your video) and our sponsorship program, which matches great shows with great brands for great cash.
on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 1:59 pm:
Fantastic stuff, really. Good to see this as a start. What intrigues me most, though, is the part where you mentioned a soon-to-come feature in the dashboard that will allow one to assign their own ads to videos. When might we be seeing more details on that? :)
I would love to be able to upload a couple of clips that I can specify to run as pre- or post-roll across all my videos, and then when they change, it changes in ALL the videos, present and past. I think that is the killer app right there.
Even better, give us the ability to place a pre-ad video, since I may want to intro my show first, then have the pre-roll ad run, then have the show play :)
on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 2:18 pm:
Sweet! :D
on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 3:00 pm:
cool. i´ll try to make money to help street dogs in viña.
on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 12:15 pm:
Andru,
We’re most definitely headed in that direction :)
on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 8:12 pm:
I’m not a heavy Blip (yet) but I think this is an excellent idea!
on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 7:35 am:
Take a look at this video, Spices of Life - Chinese New Year: Year of the Pig. At the end of the video, you’ll see an Amazon ad for the book that she is reading from, in the video.
This is the perfect ad for Nina since she is also the author of the book.
Thanks blip.tv for working with us to implement this exciting new revenue generating feature.
on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 3:20 pm:
Excellent. I was just about to email you guys and ask if something like this was possible. You’re one step ahead of the game. Looking forward to utilizing it.
on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 7:33 pm:
This is great to see guys! One question, My understanding is that you guys support a homegrown ad solution from videocodemaker.com. I assume this new DIY platform will not conflict with this? My initial thought is that since DIY is post-roll and videocodemaker is a banner ad bolted on to the side of video window, it’s not exactly the same thing. But I thought I’d ask.
Thanks!
Pura Vida from Costa Rica
Tod
on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 11:40 am:
I’ll piggy back Andru’s comments posted Feb. 12, 2007, for the record. What would be incredibly useful is having an app that allowing users to post pre and post-roll video ads. Our clients only allow advertising from a select group of businesses which absolutely requires complete management on our end. And having this DIY feature in the Dashboard would clearly be ideal - and you guys are already on it. Thanks and look forward to seeing it roll out!
on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 5:31 am:
wow, this all seems pretty interesting… any idea on the CPM payout?
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