The ongoing struggle between consumers’ desire to avoid ads at all cost and content producers who must balance their content with ad revenue has reached a tipping point. This topic will be a big focus of discussion at PLAY 2016. This week, in our Meet the Speaker series, I spoke with Will Richmond, editor and publisher of VideoNuze. Will is an industry expert and skilled moderator, and we are lucky to have him lead one of our most anticipated sessions on this topic.
[Britta] Will, you have been a steady attendee at PLAY going back to our first PLAY event in 2011. What keeps you coming back?
[Will] PLAY is a first-rate industry event, packed with great learning and networking opportunities. Brightcove does a terrific job of creating sessions with the right mix of speakers and perspectives. It’s a pleasure to be able to contribute annually to PLAY.
[B] This year, you will be moderating the panel"Balancing Great Viewing Experiences and Ad Revenue," which includes Ollie Davis of UKTV, Tom Cotter of Mediaworks, Bre Rossetti of Havas Media and Rajhev Rajkumar of News Corp Australia. What can attendees expect from this panel?
[W] Advertising is a critical revenue stream for video content providers. Yet, online users are clearly gravitating to ad-free experiences, whether through SVOD or ad blocking. All of this puts incredible pressure on content providers to figure out how to balance monetization with users’ expectations. On the panel, we’ll be digging into these issues to try to understand what’s working and how things will continue to evolve.
[B] You are the president and founder of Broadband Directions LLC, a market intelligence, publishing and consulting firm specializing in online video, which you established in 2003. You also edit and publish VideoNuze, a daily online publication widely read by video industry decision-makers. What excites you so much about the media industry and video?
[W] These are unprecedented times in the media landscape, and in TV/video, specifically. Viewers’ behaviors have changed dramatically, a multitude of devices on which to watch video have proliferated and new business models have emerged. The result is incredible disruption through the entire value chain — talent, production, monetization, and distribution. Specifically, technology continues to upend long-held assumptions. As an analyst, it’s both challenging and a ton of fun to understand these changes, and to help industry executives improve their likelihood of long-term success. It’s extremely rare to have a front row seat as disruption plays out in real time, and to also be able to provide value to the industry as well.
Meet Will and the other speakers at Brightcove PLAY on May 16th, 2016 in Boston. The sold-out event is free for existing Brightcove customers. Don’t get left out next year: if you want to get on the invite list for 2017, please contact us at play@brightcove.com.