Clear planning is needed to exploit video, seen as the top revenue growth opportunity for publishers.

Among conclusions in INMA’s new report, ‘Making video pay off for news publishers’ is the advice that to achieve potential growth requires a clear plan for building inventory.

“Evaluating the revenue and audience opportunities that the rapid rise in online video consumption offers media companies requires a plan to produce, acquire, and segment video content,” says industry author Paula Felps.

The report looks at the video opportunities for media companies from the perspectives of audience, content, and advertising. It highlights exponential uptake of video as a consumer medium and the plummeting costs of production, developing scale and inventory segmentation, and identifies global best practices in creating ‘TV channels’ on publisher websites.

Also covered are the economics of online video advertising, range and evolution of publishers in video development, and advice on positioning video among storytelling tools.

The advertising opportunity depends on scale, Felps says: “The degree to which a publisher can monetise this nexus between video storytelling and audience engagement depends on scale and segmentation, the pillars of advertising sales opportunities.”

First-movers among news publishers in the video space have created robust channels with a combination of original and syndicated video, of sufficient scale to command premium CPMs.

Phelps says first-mover publishers are in the best position to monetise online video, but others are putting together plans to match or exceed global best practitioners.

Among media companies in the report are Bonnier, the  UK’s Guardian News and Media, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph; Australia’s Fairfax Media; the Huffington Post; Hulu; Singapore’s Straits Times; and the Wall Street Journal.

The 63-page report is free to INMA members, or as an upgrade to membership.

Details at http://www.inma.org/modules/store/index.cfm?action=store_detail&pubid=175#ixzz2PSVxzxrX