AVOD = Advertising Video on Demand. It is a term used for a specific monetization strategy. Other monetization strategies are TVOD and SVOD, which we discussed last week - click here.
The difference between these 3 monetization strategies is the way users are asked to pay for content.
Advertising - or ad-based VOD - is a model which is free for viewers, in the sense that they pay with their "eyeballs" instead of their “creditcard". Most of us are very familiar with this model and exposed to it on a daily basis - through social video platforms like YouTube for example. Premium content owners rarely use AVOD as it generates lower amounts of revenue than SVOD. That said, there are ways to boost advertising revenues, thus making it a viable option for publishers.
Advertising strategies with Lightcast.com
1. Serving your own pre/mid/post-roll video ads - uploaded via your Lightcast.com Media Cloud, managed and served via the Lightcast AdServers. Run video ads for your own product offers and promotionals, or ads from your direct advertisers and sponsors. This is the, by far, most lucrative revenue strategy and best kept secret.
2. Serving pre/mid/post-roll video ads from ad-networks you already have contracts with. Provide Lightcast.com with compatible VAST feeds and we will integrate them in your ad-server setup and program your players, mobile apps and TV apps to display the ads from your own ad-network sources. This model is only recommendable if you already have long-standing contracts with ad-networks you want to stick with. Otherwise this option holds no advantage for you as the publisher.
3. If you would like to combine the two options above (e.g. serving video ads from #1 and #2), we can setup fallback campaigns (also called waterfall). This simply means when an ad-request is sent and one campaign doesn't serve ads due to e.g. a low fill-rate, it falls back to the next campaign in line and tries to serve ads. If that campaign doesn't serve ads for whatever reason, it falls back to the next ad-campaign etc.
This is what we recommend as waterfall solution:
- Tier 1: own ads for internal promotion
- Tier 2 (or merged with Tier 1): ads of direct advertisers / sponsors
- Tiers 3+: VAST tag from an AdNetwork of your choice
Where can you have AVOD integrated?
1. On Your Websites (through Lightcast’s ad-enabled web player)
2. On Your Mobile Apps (through Lightcast’s ad-enabled mobile player)
3. On Your TV Apps (through integration of the ad-module on your TV Apps)
Basically everywhere, except on social media. There is no way for you as the content owner and publisher to monetize your content on the major Social Networks and Video Portals. Instead they monetize your content with advertising for their own business revenue on their own websites (but as a trade-of, they cover their own bandwidth cost).
