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"A concept in video advertising has been bubbling up amongst the professionals I've been listening to over the last six months, one that makes a lot of sense and is already in use by several successful podcasters, but one that is rarely described explicitly and definitely lacks a cute buzzword-y name, at least as far as I've seen.\nMost advertising in video and audio media is treated separately from any other content, text or otherwise. Most blogs and news organizations that regularly (or irregularly) produce and feature video and audio content don't monetize it at all. Those that do monetize it either rely on remnant advertising methods or sell by CPM, and are often discouraged when production costs outpace the sales returns for the content being created.\nI've spoken here before many times about the value of sponsorship models for all forms of online content, and their inherent superiority over metrics-based advertising for publishers. The topic has come up a few times when we've discussed different ways to monetize Twitter, particularly in the context of making money from a personal brand, rather than trying to look at the content as monetizable inventory:\nFolks like\u00A0Louis Gray\u00A0and\u00A0Robert Scoble\u00A0have been able to launch entire Web 2.0 niches just by describing a problem, and then subsequently promoting a company or set of developers that work to solve those issues. Those are just two names I\u2019m intimately familiar with within the hundreds of Twitter users that have several thousand or more subscribers. Twitter should be striking deals with these users and splitting the cash with them.\nAnd I spoke even more recently about the idea of sponsorship in the context of online video when I explored some of the hidden reasons behind Revision3's recent cuts:\nFor a real world example, why is it, do you think, that Cisco signed on to sponsor the Mashable Conversations video podcast (one with zero subscribers at the time when they signed the deal) before we\u2019d ever put out an episode? \u00A0Why do you think Seagate continues to sponsor Robert Scoble\u2019s endeavors, despite the fact that he doesn\u2019t have the distribution of larger blogs like us? \u00A0The answer is the same in both cases - those advertisers want to have their name associated with the brands they\u2019re buying into.\u00A0\nWhen you compare the budgets spent on brand sponsorship to metrics based ads on the very same show, the value to the publisher is clear - sponsorship is the way to go, as it can swing the money dial upwards easily by between a factor of 10 and 100.\nWith a Difference Like That, Doesn't Advertiser Value Suffer?\nAdvertiser value, in theory, should go up. The reality of sponsorship situations is that they're chosen much more carefully, and with much more manual interference. A company simply isn't going to drop what can easily be a six figure sum on a well known publisher's brand without some human interaction taking place. Conversely, buys that take place on remnant video inventory or CPC text and image inventory can easily exceed that value, and most of the time it's handled primarily by automated systems.\nPerhaps in a coming age, these sponsorship transactions will also take place by sophisticated automated means (and when that day comes, a lot of folks in the sales and marketing business will be fearful of their jobs), but I rather doubt it.\nThese types of sponsorships are generally made because careful consideration has been made by both the savvy publisher and the savvy marketer to identify where the audience for the product or service and the content being monetized coincide closely.\nFor a real example of what I'm talking about, simply look no further than our daily sponsored feature at Mashable, the Sun Startup Review. The content and the sponsorship is strictly textual in nature, but the concept here is the same. Sun decided that a key target for their future business lay in the startup sector, and Mashable's brand is inextricably tied to the startup business, so thus a sponsor-publisher relationship made sense.\nSun could have simply bid on a text ad on the side bar, or even purchased one of the more expensive graphic ads we sell, but they were looking to shape their image to our audience beyond what may or may not be glimpsed when a reader scrolls through our pages looking for content.\u00A0\nIn terms of online video, these concepts are no different, it's just that the added value of the sponsorship becomes much more stark and visible.\nNew Media Beats Heritage Media Moguls at Their Own Game\nAlthough I've vocally disagreed with Brightcove's media distribution strategies from time to time, their Vice President Adam Berrey very succinctly made this point about publishers with respect to how they work to monetize their video efforts at a recent roundtable discussion hosted by Beet.TV.\n \nThe point that he's driving at there is that it's the audience you're selling, and not the content. This is true for any media organization, and it's an important distinction for those who are trying to sell any New Media inventory to learn and learn well.\nPut another way, New Media publishers hold in their grasp the holy grail that moguls of the olden days spent millions, if not billions, to acquire - the ability to sell against multiple media types. Congress won't ever pass legislation to break up a media monopoly by an online website in an effort to prevent them from utilizing video, audio, images and text on their website. On the other hand, congressional hearings are routinely held whenever mergers and acquisitions take place that consolidate too much media in the hands of too few publishers.\nJust In Case You Need a Refresher on the Value of Video\nCase study after case study shows how video and audio are more valuable than simple text content. The old standby study I like to cite was published two years ago by Ken Rutkowski, and it documented the simply amazing response rates to online video advertisements.\nIt found that of those that watched a video advertisement online, 45% had some sort of measurable response from the ad, and 31% followed through on the advertisement enough to go to the company website. Of those that watched the advertisement, 16% ended up making a purchase, and separate 13% either signed up for a free trial or ordered a subscription.\nPlainly, if under half watch the advertisement, and then 45% of those folks respond, you\u2019ve got around a 25% viewer to response ratio, a not insignificant number. Likewise, of all the folks that will view a video, 12.9% will end up buying the product, requesting a free trial, or ordering a subscription.\nAt this point, evangelism for online video response rates is almost preaching to the choir, no matter who it is you're talking to. The reasons behind it, particularly for the web savvy, are almost common sense. \u00A0\n\nA video advertisement defeats most common forms of web ad-blindness.\u00A0\nStandard video and audio CPM base rates for even remnant ads are far higher than that of text.\nVideo and audio are more memorable and often easier venues for conveying complex ideas, and thus ...\n... better at creating a lasting impression of advertiser brands, offers, products and services.\n\nThe formulas for CPMs and CPCs are great starting points, but shouldn't be set in stone. When a publisher is looking to solidify the sponsorship relationship, they should treat all inventory (be it audio, video or text) as ala carte. \u00A0The key is, for both advertisers and those who sell ads, to wrap your head around the concept of what a video or audio ad is worth, what your brand and audience is worth, and how to convey that to those who want to partner with you to reach your audience."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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