Monday, November 19, 2018

Two Video Companies Are Eating Up The Internet

Netflix and YouTube are the two most powerful video content platforms in the world, marrying great tech with great content and dictating the future of television and all form of digital video content.  They both seem to get stronger by the day and, as recently reported, are literally eating up the Internet, together responsible for 25% of global Internet traffic.

They are each the leaders and role models for the two ways we will consume all our video content shortly: one subscription based, the viewing passive, on bigger screens and featuring longer form programming; the other ad supported, viewed actively (clicking, swiping, sharing) on smaller screens featuring shorter form programming.

We'll probably spend an equal amount of our aggregate video viewing time with each model, but we can see a bit more clearly what the longer form models will look like - it's the same TV and film formats we've always had, just unlimited choices.  The short form is much less defined, as the technology and user base is younger and open to experiencing (and influencing) new video formats.

Netflix and YouTube's success is driving a frenzied reaction from fellow digital behemoths and the largest traditional media companies.  Disney's acquisition of Fox and AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner were triggered in large part by Netflix's growing strength, and Facebook's deep dives into video with Watch and IGTV is an attempt to compete with YouTube.  And Jeffery Katzenberg has raised over $1 billion from some of the biggest and most influential players in the entertainment industry to launch a new service that brings TV-level production budgets to short form, mobile viewed content.

It's the short form we here at Roaring Earth are focused on.  Our goal is to thrill and enlighten like the BBC does time and time again with their long form nature docs, most of which can be found on Netflix.  They are the incomparable masters of long form nature and wildlife content and Planet Earth 2, from a few years back, is among the most successful television series of all time. 

But there is a huge opportunity to create similar content specifically for mobile devices.  We have delivered over 250 million video views to our site's video library, while developing and fine-tuning a new format we call "mini-docs." They are 1-3 minutes in length featuring extraordinary stories from our natural world that can be watched on the go, with quick loading play lists for folks that want to binge for a few minutes.  This one just hit the 3 million view mark a few weeks after launch:


It is a golden age for short form and long form content.