Consumer Generated Advertising Revenue

Well, we knew it was coming. UGC has pretty much taken over the web. Up until now, they were doing it for fun, and not getting paid for it. That’s about to change. The new generation of content creators will also be advertisers – or at least conduits to it.

Online Advertisers years ago started programs where users could embed banners into their websites, and users would get discounts based on the traffic they sent to sites, such as Amazon. Well, lets step that up a notch. Google is now paying users to serve relevant ads. See those ads on this blog under “ADS BY GOOGLE” - bottom of right column? I get paid based on click thrus. OK, well, we all know I’m not driving major traffic here, but that’s not the point. What if users could capitalize on views of their own content? Imagine users who get a million views of their content on YouTube – right now that user doesn’t benefit from any of the advertising on that page.

Here’s an example: a new site, currently in beta, called LiveRail is throwing their hat in the ring. They host video (in high-quality, fast loading, flash format), same as YouTube. They allow you to use an embed code to embed the video on your own site, same as YouTube. There are 2 big differences between LiveRail and YouTube. The first is that the videos appear only where the viewer places them – allowing them to maintain control of ownership. I think this will be an area of contention for some. The second, and key differentiator is this: The embed code includes relevant ad placements below. The ads, when clicked, stop the video and show brief content by advertisers. When finished, it resumes the content that was being watched. The creator of the content gets paid for each view.
Check out the LiveRail beta here.