Today, social media seems like it’s everything. With midroll ads on Facebook and multiple ways to distribute your content via social media, it may seem tempting to put all of your effort and content on these platforms. However, prioritizing social may not be the smartest video business decision because owned and operated sites actually deliver a much higher value than social media platforms. In fact, Richie Hyden, from Publishers Daily gives a pretty clear argument why, though social media is definitely a helpful tool, it shouldn’t be your end all be all.
“The argument is pretty straightforward: You need to make sure you’re positioning your content and providing the user experience to succeed in places where you have the highest revenue potential, including O&O. Typically, O&O sites have better targeted audiences and advertisers are willing to pay a premium to access them, at around $20-$30 CPM (and much higher for super premium such as the Wall Street Journal). Social has scale, certainly, but not the targeted audience of a premium publication, and publishers can typically make less than $1 CPM.”
Though content creators can capitalize on video advertising on social media, O&O websites still offer unparalleled revenue opportunities and overall premium video experience. To see what we mean by owned and operated websites, check out Zype customers like Night Flight, The Film Detective, and Havoc TV. Though they’re all incredibly active on social media platforms, they still rely on their O&O websites to distribute and monetize their content. O&O websites also allow for more personalization. For example, Zype’s ad timings feature allows you to place ads anywhere in your video, but also monetize through SVOD and TVOD.
“If we use the sales analogy of the buyer’s journey, then social would be the “awareness” stage, a click through to an O&O website is the “consideration” stage, and watching and engaging video on that O&O is the “decision” stage. When you get a viewer to watch content on your O&O, it’s a sale, and all the incremental follow-on views and repeat visits as a result of personalization are the upsell or cross-sell. As the old marketing aphorism goes, it’s more profitable to sell more to fewer customers than acquiring more, but selling only once.”
This isn’t to say that social media platforms should be completely written off. In fact, these platforms are great for visibility, and should be used as a lead gen tool, and prospect potential clients. It’s a tool that can be used for promotion and drive traffic to your site. However, they are definitely not a substitute for O&O websites.