The Rapid Monetization of CGM

It is inevitable, and it is by and large a good thing. If someone creates a compelling piece of video that ends up attracting hundreds of thousands of views, the YouTubes of the world that host the video make a lot of money off ad impressions and click revenue. It only makes sense for companies to share the wealth. That’s why I love sites like Revver that pay 50% of any click revenue generated from the video back to the video owner.

New tools are enabling video creators to embed tags in videos that link to an ecommerce site where the featured product can be purchased.  This product linking practice, called “plinking” is great for streamed clips of TV shows. I’d love to click on the NBC.com stream of “Friday Night Lights” to buy Coach Taylor’s sunglasses. (I’m not getting paid for that link, I just love that show and want more people to watch it so NBC keeps it on the air.) 

Product placement has long been a part of commercial television and movies, so this is a great way for brands to capitalize on the emotion generated around a product and increase the return from that placement investment. 

But when it comes to plinking in consumer-generated videos, this doesn’t feel quite as good. This goes against the whole spirit of consumer-generated media. The beauty of CGM today is that is it “real” and free from corporate biases. We love seeing the honest and unfiltered ideas, opinions, and emotions that people are thinking about.  When a video creator is trying to make money off product in a video, they instantly lose that inherent “CGM credibility”. How would you feel watching a video clip celebrating only products that offered the creator the highest rev-share?

You’ll view it like you view any other big-media generated commercial today.

There is no doubt this will fuel the creative juices for consumer-generated advertisements, which is great news for brands. We’ll all have a lot of laughs watching people doing funny stuff to sell the latest iPod, but where will the line be drawn? How far will these e-commerce influences go? What if I referenced “Monday Night Football” here instead of “Friday Night Lights” just because I could make more money from ESPN than NBC for this link?  What if that famous AOL customer service call video pushed a link to sign up for Verizon DSL link in your face, or if that sleeping Comcast rep video ended with a Satellite TV offer? How much sincerity and credibility will consumer-generated video lose when everyone has the same biases as the good old fashion TV commercial?

Plinking is going to take consumer-generated video-osphere in some new directions. With money-making opportunities more immediately available, the quest for dollars will drive an increase in the quality and quantity of these videos as more professional efforts are applied to the creative and production processes. At the same time, the door will be wide open for anyone with a video camera to try to sell you something. Now those rambling video blog monologues will really have something to opine about - the jeans they are wearing, the music playing in the background, the poster on the wall, etc. Whatever gets you to click and buy something.

One thing we know for sure, world of influence for companies is going to get a whole lot more complicated. 

Tell me what you think. How do you think plinking will impact videos?  …and can anyone please suggest a better term than “consumer-generated video-osphere”? Now with Google firmly in control, maybe we’ll just call it the Tubeosphere.