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Doug Knopper, cofounder and co-CEO of video-advertising company FreeWheel, says he believes that the key to reducing piracy is increasing the legitimate ways that users can watch videos online. "In the ad-supported world, you actually do want a larger audience, and you want your video to be distributed widely and get the largest viewership," he says. The trick is to set up wide distribution without losing out on money from advertising. FreeWheel's technology is embedded in players on websites such as Joost, Veoh, or Blip.tv, and serves ads according to rules set by the owner of the video. Though file-sharing systems such as BitTorrent are often criticized for harboring piracy, Knopper says that such sites could potentially offer ad-supported legal downloads.
Mochi Media, an ad network for game developers, takes the concept a step further. The company's software automatically serves ads no matter where the content appears, so there's no need to negotiate a content-sharing deal and agree on terms. "Piracy used to be sad, but now it's a bonus--it means more distribution," says Eric Boyd, vice president of engineering. Mochi Media provides customers with code that tracks Flash games to learn what sites they're on, what country they're in, and other details. It then uses that data to figure out which ads to serve. Though Boyd says that it's possible to strip the code out of a game and repackage it ad-free, that requires a fair bit of skill. "Generally, the people stealing content just want good stuff," he says, and are happy to let the game be as is, as long as they get to use and share it.
Though these companies all acknowledge that it will take more experimentation to figure out how best to share content and still make money from it, they agree that previous attempts to stop the content from being shared, such as digital-rights management technology, haven't worked. Mochi Media's Boyd says that finding legitimate ways to share can give individual game developers better control over what they create. "This is a better long-term play," he says.
The growth of file-sharing traffic has tailed off, but streaming video continues to expand.
Researchers find a way to identify individuals in supposedly anonymous social-network data.
No one really knows how many people visit websites. A San Francisco startup and Google are both working to change that.
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
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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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