Technology Review
How to make money from online content, even after it gets loose on third-party websites.
Trying to control how articles, videos, and video games spread online could be the definition of a losing battle. One unauthorized video comes down, and two more spring up in its place. But some companies are giving up the fight and looking for ways to embrace the phenomenon of online piracy. They have tools to get money from advertising even when content ends up in unexpected places.
At a recent panel at South by Southwest Interactive, a Web conference in Austin, TX, panelists suggested that the creators of online content need to use the wide distribution of pirated content, instead of trying to stop the piracy. Some companies are doing this by making it easier to use third-party content with permission, while others are working on technologies that can find content wherever it ends up, and sometimes serve ads along with it.
"For every article, we typically find 20 copies around the Web, some full and some partial," says Rich Pearson, vice president of marketing for Attributor, a company that specializes in identifying text and video that appears online for its customers. After breaking a customer's content into small chunks, Attributor creates digital fingerprints for each chunk. Its system then crawls the Web and searches for matches for those fingerprints, notifying the owner of the results.
But content creators are already changing their attitudes toward the piracy they discover. Matt Robinson, Attributor's vice president of business development and partnerships and a speaker at South by Southwest Interactive, noted that, two years ago, most of Attributor's customers used the technology to serve takedown notices. Today, he said, most are using it to gather statistics on where their content is appearing.
Attributor is addressing the problem in two ways. First, the company is working with online ad networks to share revenue with the owner of any content that appears on an ad-supported site. Attributor is also testing code that attaches ads to articles, no matter where the article appears. A site can grab an article with permission, as long as the code that handles the ads is in place. Robinson noted that there's still a lot to work out, such as figuring out the minimum amount of compensation that the content creator should accept.
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Recently here in Nordic Europe (Sweden, Finland, UK, Germany etc.) a new kind of music service was introduced, with the support of the record labels. You can either pay and listen limitlessly music over the internet, or if you have the invite to the service, you can also use the service for free, but then you'll hear every once in a while a localized advertisement. Check out www.spotify.com
I think the concept is a winner and has a fast growing loyalist fanbase. 100 euros per year for all the music you want and no need to finda/download tracks... aaah.
Great post Erica. Our CEO was at SXSW and brought back the current thinking around content piracy. Seems like the winds are shifting and content creators are interested in getting some benefit when content leaves their site.
Check out www.tynt.com for another product that is focused on using lifted content to benefit the originating site.
Interesting article, but it could have used some more examples because the world of internet content is very large. Plus, I was confused because the article jumped between videogames, videos, and article based content, I would have liked to see specific example for each type of content.
Brian Glassman
This is clearly an innovation in value capture, being how companies capture value from their customers, which in this case, are customers those who obtained the content illegally. I have seen several methods of utilizing piracy to capture value, most of them center on using piracy to distribute advertising contents or promote the content.
Video Games
I have seen full versions of video games on Torrent networks prior to their official release, but upon downloading them learnt it was a teaser released to entice and hook you into buying the full version. That was some smart marketing. Putting ads into a video game is a useless endeavor because they tend to get ignored (low recollection in marketing terms) unless they are literally part of the game, like selecting your avatars dress in Tony Hawk skateboarding. Massively multiplayer online games have broken the piracy conundrum by requiring a subscription to get into on the online action.
Videos
Inserting advertising content into videos (like watermarks, bottom logo, or pre-or post-rolls) insures adverting even if the content is stolen and place somewhere else. Many times video teasers are entered into torrent networks to help in promoting their contents, like half a movie in the effort to get the people to want to go the the theater to see the ending.
Articles
Unfortunately, most ads can be edited out of articles, even if they call dynamic ad content, sorry almost anyone can cut and paste text on the internet.
Flash Content
It can be very difficult to edit out ads from flash content like flash video games, so placing them in a secured swf file can guaranty advertising regardless of the location.
In essence, the best promoters use the strengths of piracy networks to quickly and cheaply spread their content to gain new users and more views! Doing it smartly is the trick!
Brian Glassman
Ph.D in Innovation Management Purdue University
Commercialization
Innovation Management
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Luckenbach
2 Comments
Other ways to profit from piracy
We made a little video a few years ago called Deer for Breakfast, and it has been posted all over the net. We didn't have any advertising, although some sites added ads.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/316898/deer_for_breakfast_in_texas/
I profited by having my pickup in the video, by having the url for my unrelated website on the tailgate. No ads embedded in the video, but I received many hits from people typing in my website url in their browser and at my site, there is advertising. I also still receive a lot of free publicity, because the video is still popular.
Wish I could say I parked the truck there on purpose, lol.
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