Video Drives Success On The Internet


I don't necessarily totally agree with the analysis of www.visualcapitalist.com, but they're a very clever bunch and this is food for thought, if nothing more.

What is interesting is that all of the major players in 2018 apart from Paypal and Wikimedia are making plays for the video market. Many of them are video first companies. And it's surprising how many of them are traditional media giants who have finally got to grip with the digital age.

We think that disrupting, in the era of Uber, AirBnB and Deliveroo is easy. But no one has seriously disrupted the TV market. YouTube and Roku have had impacts, but nothing compared to what Apple's iTunes and Spotify and Pandora have done to the music industry.

Yesterday's broadcasters are today's streamers. And notice that neither Hulu nor Netflix make the grade.

The difference between TV and everything else is rights. You can usurp rides, bedrooms and takeaways, but finding a way of usurping rights is much tougher, as YouTube proves. Yes, it's apparently a hugely successful service, but it has very little content of real value. It simply aggregates lots of content of low value, delivers an audience and monetizes it.

That's very different from creating Game Of Thrones or House Of Cards.

Creating properties with lots of complex rights, whether they be phones, software platforms or programming is difficult and involves ecosystems and industries that are difficult to break down.

Investors have always seen the value of IP, but it is the rights in the best box sets and sports properties, as well as children's 'brands', esports and other visual 'brands' that will drive success on the internet in the future. Connectivity is already commoditiesed for urban dwellers and channels have long lost value.

How do you balance what you pay for rights against what you get for them ? There are highly complex models for financial trading, but hardly any consideration is ever given to the content rights market, worth hundreds of billions...