Brightcove had the privilege of having Jon Steinberg, CEO of The Daily Mail North America, and JR McCabe, SVP of Video for Time Inc. sitting together for the afternoon keynote at Brightcove PLAY. They covered topics such as putting their chips down on branded content, taking risks to drive viewership, being in R&D mode with video, and whether budgeting is actually “stupid.”
Following the sizzle reels that the two publishers produced for their New Fronts sales events the conversation roughly flowed in 3 sections. First, with the New Front pitches to agencies being a component, how are they each going to market to monetize their investment in video? Second, what are the programming strategies of their respective organizations in terms of producing or acquiring the right content for their audiences? And lastly - how do JR and Jon, as leaders, set goals for and progress their organizations efforts in video?
There are some solid soundbites in here (a smattering of my favorites included below).
“I’ve often wondered why we do anything but video…You can be 7 times less good in that format in terms of viewership and make so much more money.” - Jon
“We should spend all of our time I think on the more direct and idea-centric stuff. That’s where we can make the business go from what was a $100MM business to a $200MM business - that’s not going to happen with programmatic.” - Jon
“The content outgrowth is different for every platform but the development is not.” - JR
“50% of my news content is gone in 36 to 48 hours - it’s not relevant anymore - it’s been replaced.” - JR
On “evergreen content:” - “You don’t need to produce as much but you damn sure better make sure it’s good. It’s gotta be to a certain quality standard that will stand the test of time.” - JR
“You have to give something for people to shoot for as they optimize.” - JR
Suffice to say that the future for video publishers has plenty of unknowns but plenty of excitement. The opportunity to invest, innovate and iterate is being embraced by Jon and JR’s companies and a lot of others that attended PLAY. Enjoy the discussion.
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