Rocketboom‘s not making it with ad revenue. Marketwatch reports that the daily video podcast can’t make decent money despite having 200,000 downloads a day. Those numbers aren’t enough for advertisers, who would rather reach millions. I don’t blame them.
The trouble with Rocketboom is not that its audience is too small for big advertisers (though it is). The trouble is that Rocketboom is mass media dressed up as niche media. It’s general entertainment on a smaller scale than TV networks and major media websites can achieve. Because Rocketboom reaches a general audience, it’s really not any better an advertising bargain than a cable TV channel. It’s relatively cheap to produce, but that advantage is likely offset by continued hesitancy of advertisers to jump into such a new area.
The future of online media is not in big shows like Rocketboom, which reach 200,000 people of divergent interests. The future of online media is in shows of all sizes with much more narrowly focused content — shows like Podclimber or TWIT. The future of online media is about communicating with people effectively, consistently and authoritiatively — not renting out billboard space on someone else’s channel.
Scott Bourne chimes in with some thoughts on whether Rocketboom is representative of all online media. I agree with him that it’s not — and for a lot of the same reasons.
HT: MicroPersuasion
David,
Great observation… and you are so right when you say that the future of online media “is in shows of all sizes with much more narrowly focused content… .” I think that holds for almost any format of content online.