Identifying opportunities in video - a model

I've always been curious on how to model video opportunities from a core strategy perspective.

Here is my take. 

We should use the strategic positioning model to 

• identify opportunities by specifying various positioning areas,
•  identify problems faced in each area, 
• define target market for these problems, 
• and set of benefits to solve these problems. 

This enables us to have a crisp definition of the product - which is nothing but a set of benefits for a target customer or a market segment. 

Strategic positioning in the video market can be divided into:

1. Variety based positioning - the video workflow
2. Customer segment based positioning - customer segments
3. Access based positioning - on the modes of accessing videos. 

Specifically, 

We can use  "variety based positioning" to identify opportunities by understanding the video workflow:

1. Ingest of video
2. Encode/transcoding video
3. Creation of a video asset (metadata + content). The video asset can be categorized as UGC, semi-pro, professional.
4. Organizing videos and playlists via CMS
5. Inserting ads. There are different ad formats - in-stream, overlays and ad-rules - ad frequency, post/pre rolls, etc.
6. Content streaming
7. Player - player creation, skinning
8. Content syndication
9. Content aggregation.

For  "customer segment based positioning", we should know:

1. Consumer - end-user consuming content on a publishing site
2. Content providers - consumers, semi-pro, professional 
3. Publishers - video destination sites, aggregation sites, video in context sites.
4. Advertisers - small biz, medium sized businesses, and large.
5. Developers - they create publishing sites

And finally, "access based positioning":

1. Form factor for accessing video - mobile
2. Bandwidth constraints - on mobile or slower connection.

By keeping these three positioning models in mind, we can identify unique market opportunities and define a product offering.

I'd use the following table to articulate the problems that each area faces, example: 

Strategic Positioning Areas	Problems Faced
Ads - inserting, rules	Measuring ad effectiveness
.........

Once key strategic areas and its problems are well identified, we can then articulate market sizing for each area and its value proposition. The product definition must focus on a set of benefits for a target segment. The feature set is a technical articulation of the benefits.

Video syndication and ads - on the content or player?

This question has always intrigued me?  In network TV land syndicating shows generally means - making prime time content available to run on other networks (e.g. syndicating Sienfeld). 

How does this translate to online video world? Content providers make content available to different distribution channels. E.g. CBS audience network syndicates content to YouTube, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. However, they are generally averse to allow sharing or further syndication to others. Why is that? I believe its the fear of losing ad revenue. CBS does ad-rev share deals with YouTubes of the world, they want to ensure that wherever their content is being distributed, the monetization can be attributed back to CBS. 

Here is another data point worth noting - almost 40% of YouTube's stream count are via "embeds" - i.e. shared linked outside of YouTube! In addition, if you pay close attention to ComScore video metrix, you'll note that video stream share is very fragmented - YouTube has the lion share (50%+) but the rest of the share is divided into 100 + players. 

Syndication in the online world is very different from TV network land. There are hundreds of viable distribution channels. Content providers have to take advantage of all distribution channels to reap full potential of thier ad revenue. 

My assertion is that barrier to universal syndication is the inability to attribute ad revenue back to the content provider. And this barrier is limited by our technical ability to associate ad with the video instead of the syndicated player. 

Currently, most video ads are managed by an ad-plugin in the player talking to a video ad server (e.g. Doubleclick or an internal ad server in MSN, Yahoo!, etc). If they could be directly part of the video, the ad revenue could be directly associated with the stream instead of the player. This will incentivize the content providers for universal distribution.