2007: The Online Video Era?

Guess what was embedded in both the lonelygirl15 and Google features in Wired’s December online version? Clickable video of lonelygirl15 along with an array of other YouTube spectaculars, including Noah Kalina’s “Everyday/Work in Progress,” which depicts daily photos of Noah for six years streamed into a 5-minute video.

Just as Noah’s video reminds us that we’re all a work in progress, interviewees for this story consistently returned to one theme regarding the online video quest: It’s all a work in progress.

Conceiving Content

With any work in progress there is a starting point. And although many publishers don’t service audiences similar to Wired, they can still experience a successful reader bond with video. It all comes down to the market—the seed for aggregating the most eyeballs, and revenue. So says Eric Shanfelt, Penton Media’s director of online media. Before getting into video too deep, he suggests publishers brainstorm programming ideas to create content that will tune-in to audience and advertiser demand.

“And you don’t have to be a consumer magazine to do this well,” he says. “Video has a strong place in b-to-bs. … I believe carefully crafted content combined with sponsorship-based models will work for them,” says Shanfelt.

He also says a little trial and error wouldn’t hurt, and he should know. The pool of Penton publications is undergoing a sort of video experiment in which various forms of content are bubbling, swirling and boiling.

For starters, there’s the Lodging Hospitality site—LHTVOnline.com—which Shanfelt describes as a direct-revenue-producing entity with interviews with CEOs and general managers for major hotel and motel firms. The video guests talk about their latest endeavors to an audience of real estate developers anxious to build their own chains. This site got its legs at the end of 2006 and will be running with more style in 2007, reports Shanfelt.