Streaming Media West: Updating and Syndicating Your Channels for New Media Distribution

This was the second of two sessions I moderated at Streaming Media West. My original plan for this session was to run through a series of questions that I had covered with each of my panelists in previous conversations. This was a similar format to my other panel session (using questions to trigger the discussion) but something else happened, the audience got really engaged in a Q&A session and it ultimately became a much richer session through their participation.

While the numbers dwindled in the last day of the conference it turned out to be a really fun and valuable session for the participants. A big thanks to my speakers Mark Rotblat, Paul Kontonis and Saidah Nash for all their time, effort and resources to make it a success!

(See their full profiles here.)



Updating and Syndicating Your Channels for New Media Distribution

Track B: (B302) 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Many traditional venues for news, information, and entertainment are in the process of transforming from their old ways to the new Web 2.0 models (syndication, tagging, comments, live chat, live streaming). Audience viewing habits have also changed and their demands for engaging social media and interactive features often drive the delivery model. Many online video publishers use different strategies, tools, and services to syndicate multimedia feeds. Learn from some of the people that are changing the way traditional media is being syndicated within their businesses.

Moderator:
Larry Kless, Founder, President, OnlineVideoPublishing.com

Presenters:
Mark Rotblat, VP of Sales and Marketing, TubeMogul
Paul Kontonis, CEO, Co-Founder, For Your Imagination
Saidah Nash, VP, Digital Media, Thomson Reuters

Here's another short Flip video I shot that captured a few moments from my view at the podium and some audience Q&A after the session.



The real key is how do you syndicate video broadly and monetize it? You can’t really get players to carry messages, you have to bake it in. Mark said that the benefits of syndication are important for some of the following reasons:

1. Getting content closer to audience, where they want to watch it here audience resides, not driving it to your site, channels, engaging with audience (comments, outreach, audience) need to do that
2. Audience building
3. SEO (syndicating on multiple sites increases search ranking)
4. Less reliance on one publishing platform (different people prefer different sites, different editorial processes)

As online video viewing increases the playing field levels to where independent content producers can reach and exceed the numbers of the major networks and studios and compete for advertising dollars. We're in some exciting times and it will be interesting to see the online video ecosystem or what Will Richmond calls "The Syndicated Video Economy" continue to evolve.