The Gong Show

Premium Content Syndication and Monetization

A few years ago I got a call from a friend at a large media company (name withheld to protect the innocent) who asked for some ideas/feedback regarding web syndication of the content his company owned. He saw all his content being bittorrented, remixed on YouTube, and posted in snippets on blogs. He understood that this was interesting user engagement and valuable viral marketing that should be fostered, but all of these use cases were illegal and unmonetized, so he had to do something.

He asked me if I had examples of successful web syndication of high-value video content for free… he was constructing a business case to the board and wanted to propose that they open up their archives of content, with monetization through ads attached, to be embedded anywhere, but he wanted some evidence, such as positive case studies to backup his proposal.

I didn’t know what to tell him. I certainly wanted to see his proposal adopted because I thought it was a great, daring idea, and it felt net-native. And, as a consumer of content, I thought they could build a terrific product out of free access to their archives. But, when I think of successful distribution of premium content on the web, I think of MLB.TV, WSJ, Netflix Watch Instantly, FT… I haven’t seen a *Big Win* by a media company that gave everything away for free and relied only on embedded ads for monetization.

I was pleased to read Bill Gurley’s take on the Free meme floating around the web because his opinions are in sync with my hesitation. Bill wrote:

Even though the marginal cost may be zero, if you have highly differentiated content, there is no reason to adopt a free business model… HBO’s hit shows should not be free. The NFL has no need to offer free access to all games. The Wall Street Journal is doing the exact right thing, and I find it peculiar that the New York Times is not executing the same strategy. I would also suggest that over the next two years you will see the majority of high-quality video content move behind a subscription wall, even at sites like Hulu.

So, in short, I still feel like I wish I could have been more helpful to my big media friend, but it wasn’t clear to me that free access to their content was the right solution for them, and I still haven’t figured it out today.