Live Streaming Production Distribution Monetization

Live Streaming: Production, Distribution, Monetization

How to stream live content that looks great on any device, engages your audience, and fulfils your mission whether you’re producing TV, building your brand’s web presence, serving your flock, or educating the next generation of content creators.

John R. Naylor B.Sc.(Hons), M.B.A., C.Eng.

Until recently the sheer cost of creating TV content, live or otherwise and getting it out to an audience large enough to monetize it excluded all but the largest Film Studios, TV Networks, and Cable and Satellite TV operators. Back then, if you were a producer with a great idea for a show or a movie, this arrangement was filled with frustrations. Just getting noticed was very competitive; and if you were lucky enough to be picked up by distributer, you became hostage to their changing priorities, and lost control over the promotion and advertising for your content. Finally the time between idea and audience could be so long (literally years) that the market had likely moved on by the time your content aired. All of which added up to uncertainty, expense, and frustration!

Things are very different for people with ideas for great content now! It’s possible to start streaming content for free from your smart-‐phone, though today audiences increasingly demand the production values they expect from Network TV in return for their engagement. Fortunately, all you need to make something as sophisticated as an HD multi-‐camera production is within reach. Even better, the frustration, cost and uncertainty of distribution goes away because you can be your own broadcaster. And, if desired, you can quickly build to a profitable audience size by using easily accessible solutions for monetizing your content. That’s if people want to watch it, and interact with it, which is where you come in; piano playing kittens no longer make the grade!

Read this paper to find out how to achieve the production values that the public has come to expect, how to anticipate and avoid problems that will spoil the show, how to monetize what your audience consumes, and how people like you are already finding success.

Live Streaming: Production, Distribution, Monetization John R. Naylor

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Contents Producing and Distributing Live Content ..................................................................................................... 3

Signal Chain Overview – from Cameras to Consumers ............................................................................ 3

Produce ................................................................................................................................................ 4

Encode ................................................................................................................................................. 4

Distribute ............................................................................................................................................. 4

Consume .............................................................................................................................................. 4

Cameras ................................................................................................................................................... 5

Production ............................................................................................................................................... 7

Encoding .................................................................................................................................................. 8

Bandwidth and Distribution ................................................................................................................... 12

Guidelines for Reliable Delivery ......................................................................................................... 13

Securing Your Content ....................................................................................................................... 13

Producing Social Media ......................................................................................................................... 13

Test! ....................................................................................................................................................... 14

Commercializing your Content .................................................................................................................. 14

What’s a CPM? ...................................................................................................................................... 14

What’s an Alexa Rank? .......................................................................................................................... 15

What’s a Paywall? .................................................................................................................................. 15

Pay Per View ...................................................................................................................................... 16

Subscriptions ..................................................................................................................................... 16

Linear Ads or Paywall? ........................................................................................................................... 16

Case Study, Eventstream’s The Mens’ Room .................................................................................... 17

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 17

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................... 18

References ................................................................................................................................................. 18

Notices ....................................................................................................................................................... 18


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Producing and Distributing Live Content Live web-‐streaming covers such a wide range of production budgets and production values that it can be hard to define exactly what it is. Today’s state of the art starts with an entry cost that is zero for all practical purposes. It’s possible to open a free UStream account and stream live from a smartphone or tablet.

Leo Laporte’s “This Week in Technology” perhaps captures the opposite end of the continuum. With a purpose built facility in Petaluma, CA, that produces approximately 8 hours of technology focused news content every day; and over 20 HD cameras hung around the studio connected to a large video router, the production technology and values overlap with traditional broadcast to a large degree.

This paper is for producers with ambitions that lie somewhere between these extremes who want to know more about the technicalities and practicalities of producing content to a high standard, and also how to deploy it in an impactful way.

Signal Chain Overview – from Cameras to Consumers To start, let’s take an overview of the journey your content takes from the camera or cameras all the way to the viewership.

Distribute ConsumeProduce Encode

CDN or SSP

Figure 1: Live Streaming Workflow

Whether your production is of a conference papers session, or a high school sports event, it will be more interesting to watch, and more practical to capture all the action available if you use multiple cameras, and switch the angles frequently to show your viewership the most relevant or compelling action. Figure 1 illustrates a four-‐camera production, though it’s possible to use more or fewer to match your production needs.


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Produce The switcher, represented by a TriCaster in the figure serves a number of important functions to allow your content to stand out:

• Use it to switch between the different camera angles, with wipes, and transitions • Add titles and graphics such as logos and idents • Mix pre-‐recorded content into your production using the integral Digital Disk Recorders • Record the show for later editing or sharing via upload to a hosted distribution service such as

YouTube. • And, of course, stream to the Internet using the integrated feature for this purpose, which is

why TriCaster is shown straddling the Production and Streaming phases of the workflow.

Encode This is the process by which your content is transmitted from the live venue, usually into “the cloud” in the form of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) or Streaming Service Provider (SSP). There are quite a few tradeoffs to consider at this stage which we cover later:

• Do you transmit one stream from my venue, or multiple streams at different bit-‐rates and for different targets. Both can be a good choice.

• What resolution or set of resolutions should I use? • What frame rate should I use? • Should I use an interlaced or progressive picture format? Note that all modern displays are

natively progressive, and all streaming formats including HLS, Flash and Windows Media are natively progressive. So if you can produce in a progressive format such as 1080p or 720p your production will be better matched to the distribution and viewing devices. However, it’s fine to use an interlaced production format as long as your equipment can de-‐interlace it prior to encoding.

Distribute Unlike traditional television which distributes programming in a one to all fashion by using satellites, radio towers, and cable networks to broadcast content; each web stream viewer is served by a single point to point TCP/IP connection. There is no practical broadcast or multicast protocol yet available on the Internet that can be used for live web streams which is why a CDN or SSP is necessary. By moving content to where it’s needed, these entities recreate the scalability of traditional broadcast solutions.

This is also a good place for content to be re-‐purposed so that it can be viewed on all the different viewing devices that are needed.

Consume NewTek recently polled their registered users to find out which devices they targeted with their live stream. The results are summarized in Figure 2, which shows that the main device types (PCs, Macs, iOS, and Android smart-‐phones and tablets) are all important.


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Figure 2: Target Devices, Source: NewTek, Inc. Used with Permission

We’ll see later how this variety of viewing devices informs the encoding trade-‐offs discussed earlier, as we offer practical, battle-‐won advice for each element in the live streaming workflow; starting with Cameras.

Cameras For web streaming, you do not need the same 3-‐chip, 2/3” sensor instruments with $30k lenses that are common in Network TV production. The trade-‐off you’re making is one of access versus picture quality, and for live content, access wins for the audience who want to see the green room at a concert, or celebrity interviews behind a party’s velvet rope. The types, capabilities, and costs of cameras that are commonly used in live web production are summarized in Table 1.

0.0% 25.0% 50.0% 75.0% 100.0%

Personal computer based web browsers

iPad

iPhone and iPod touch

Android phones

Android tablets

Web appliances such as ROKU, Apple TV,

Internet enabled "Smart" TVs

Blackberry devices

Symbian devices

What devices is it important for you to reach with your web streams? Please check all that apply.


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Table 1: Types of Cameras Common in Live Web Production

Mount Type Great For Cost Picture Quality Avoid when Static or Lipstick Well-‐lit areas where the

lighting and framing is predictable – e.g. red carpet entrance. Camera can be clipped to scenery.

Few $100 Lowest due to small sensors and wide lenses

Lighting or framing isn’t known ahead of time.

Robotic Confined areas that won’t admit a crew (or your budget doesn’t run to one) – e.g. in a House of Worship

From $5k Good The extra cabling will cause too much labor or expense. Be especially aware of this in union shops.

ENG/Shoulder Mounted

When you need the best pictures, when action is dynamic and requires quick adjustments to framing, and exposure.

$10k and up, also requires crew

Best Budget and/or access isn’t practical

Follow these guidelines to get the best from your cameras:

1. Make sure they aren’t facing a light source. Strong lights will quickly drown out all the detail in what you’re trying to capture. Talk with the lighting guys before you mount your cameras so that you don’t point one where they’ll later mount a strong light.

2. If shooting outside, test at the same time of day as the event, or anticipate the lighting conditions. The brightness and color temperature change over the course of a day, as should your camera’s exposure and white balance settings.

3. On the subject of white balance, if available, white-‐balance all your cameras to the same reference before production. Some production switchers provide the means to balance individual inputs which can be useful if it isn’t possible to balance the cameras. This ensures that objects don’t change color dramatically between different camera angles which can distract viewers from enjoying the content to paying more attention to your production values. Something always to be avoided!

4. Avoid consumer cabling solutions such as HDMI. Analog cameras can look great side by side with digital ones and MUCH better after someone’s tripped over the (non-‐locking) HDMI cable. Of course the best combination of performance and ruggedness will come from HD-‐SDI cameras and cabling.

5. Don’t mount cameras on structures that can vibrate if you expect there to be loud bass at your event. Even small amounts of vibration are magnified by tight zooms to make them unusable.

Having a number of cameras (and mics) that are capturing the sort of content your audience wants is a great start, but a lot needs to happen between the lens and the live-‐stream to create truly engaging content.


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Production A “Network Quality” product is desirable and achievable on a web production budget. Elements that will make your content stand out for the right reasons include:

• Multi-‐camera production. As mentioned above, this makes for a more engaging viewing experience. You will need a switcher to change between different angles, and the cameras should be matched.

• Character Generator. Sometimes also known as “Titles”, or just “CG”, are the essential ingredient that stamps “professional” onto your production. Introduce talent and interviewees with lower third overlays. When producing sport you can take a data feed directly from the scoreboard to keep the viewership on your content; and not looking elsewhere for the score. The same technology allows you to connect to a news ticker to make your news show look as good as CNN.

• Pre-‐recorded clips (sometimes called “stingers” or “bumpers”) that can be played from DDRs are another means of elevating your production above the others. Both short clips that carry a sponsor’s animated logo, or key sporting moments (e.g. “goal!”, “touch down!”), and longer ones such as interviews, or highlights should be supported by your production system which should make it easy to load and play what’s appropriate.

• Computer integration. Often, an off-‐site interview or talent is brought into a live event by a Skype call, or you may need to switch between a shot of a speaker and their PowerPoint presentation, or somebody may need to share their Keynote presentation or a movie from their iPad using Apple AirPlay.

• Virtual Sets – can be used to turn your bedroom into Broadcasting House. • Social Media Integration

You may read this list and think that a full broadcast facility such as an HD production truck is required to create it, and you’d be correct! Fortunately there are an increasing number of affordable systems, exemplified by TriCaster, that integrate all the things you need into a system that occupies as little as 2 rack units. This works for a web budget.


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Figure 3: TriCaster 450 UI Showing Integration of Production System

Figure 3 shows how these capabilities are accessed from the TriCaster 450’s user interface. Comprehensive demos on its use are available on YouTube.

The Program output video signal that TriCaster and many other systems produce meets every industry standard necessary to be broadcast to air. But if your target audience is viewing on the Internet, the signal needs to be encoded first.

Encoding The choices you make when encoding content affect almost everything you care about: Viewer Engagement, Production Expenses, and Audience Maximization, and are summarized in Figure 4 .

Live Camera InputsHD-SDI, Analog Component, Composite

Network InputsiVGA and Airplay

DDRs Graphics

ProgramPreview

Virtual Set CG

Transitions and Overlays


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Figure 4: Considerations for Stream Encoding

Perhaps the choice with the largest impact is what device or devices are used as a stream encoder. The advantages and trade-‐offs of the three main choices are summarized in Table 2.

Audience engagement is maximized when the pictures look great, the stream doesn’t stall due to buffering, and the viewer isn’t distracted by the picture quality changing suddenly. The problem of meeting these requirements for all your viewers is solved by using multi bit-‐rate streaming. This is where your Program is encoded at multiple different bit-‐rates and the consumer’s viewing device chooses the best stream for its prevailing Internet conditions. This presents you with yet another decision: whether to stream all the versions at the live venue, or to stream a “master” version to “the cloud” from which your SSP can create copies to target multiple different device types at multiple bit rates. Table 3 summarizes the advantages and trade-‐offs of these two approaches.

• Picture and sound quality • Smoothness of streaming • Reliability of stream • Transparency of encoding

Viewer Engagement

• Cost of bandwidth (ISP charge) • Cost of content distribuoon (CDN or SSP charges)

Producoon Expenses

• Different device types • Different bandwidths for different users

Audience Maxmimizaoon


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Table 2: Encoding Choices, Where to Encode?

Choice Advantages Trade-‐offs Built-‐in Encoder • Lower overall system cost

• Some systems, including TriCaster automatically de-‐interlace the Program before stream encoding which improves picture quality and compression efficiency.

• Ability to set different audio levels for stream vs. main output – important!

• Ability to adjust color, brightness and contrast of streamed video separate to main output.

• Use presets to directly connect to CDNs and Streaming Service Providers – one click streaming

• Flash and Windows Media stream formats only, no HLS yet

• Single stream format at any one time

• Multi-‐rate streaming limited to 2 streams

Outboard Encoder • Distributes risk of equipment failure

• Potential for multi-‐format streaming

• Potentially more support for multiple bit-‐rates

• Significantly higher system costs • Limited ability to adjust Program

out (e.g. audio level, contrast, interlace) depending on encoder used.

Third Party Integrated Encoder

Some systems, including TriCaster support streaming SDKs through which 3rd party developers can integrate their streaming solutions. One such is Livestream, which can eliminate the trade-‐offs required to use an outboard encoder, while preserving the advantages of TriCaster’s native encoder.

• Some of these only work with one SSP.

What bit rates should you use in your “stack”? It depends on the uplink bandwidth available, and the network conditions that your viewers will experience. Firstly you need to allow for the overhead of the TCP/IP protocol. Just because your ISP has provided you with 800kb/s of uplink doesn’t mean that you can stream this fast. You should allow approximately 20% of the bandwidth for TCP/IP overhead, so that 800kb/s from your ISP will only be good enough for a 600kb/s stream out of the venue.

Next, consider some different viewing conditions for viewers on mobile and fixed Internet connections. Many households still only have DSL connections, so their downlink bandwidth will be limited to 512kb/s or 768kb/s. Using our 20% rule, this means they’ll be best served by profiles at 400kb/s and 600 kb/s respectively.


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Address mobile users by keeping the resolution at or below that of smartphones (the pictures will still look great on tablets), and offering a range of bitrates that serves users on 3G networks (video bandwidth limited to c. 768 kb/s) and also on Wi-‐Fi in the office or home.

Table 3: How to Create Multi-‐bitrate, Multi-‐device Streams

Choice Advantages Trade-‐offs Create multiple versions at the venue

• Closer control over encoding parameters, improves ability to adjust them mid-‐stream if needed.

• Significantly higher equipment costs if external encoders are used

• Uplink bandwidth is split among multiple streams. Not a problem if bandwidth is plentiful

Master to the Cloud • Minimizes equipment at venue • Faster set-‐up times • Best use of uplink bandwidth, if

that’s limited. • Potentially lower ISP costs

because less uplink bandwidth is needed.

• Only pay for the trans-‐rating and repurposing services you actually use

• Need to check that your CDN or SSP will support all the device types and stream speeds you need ahead of time.

• Restrict Android and IOS streams to use the same resolution and bit-‐rate parameters, so only the wrapper needs to be changed because the H.264 essence is compatible for both device types.

MTV use the term “rendition” to indicate a combination of video resolution, and the bit-‐rate of the encoded stream. Table 4 illustrates a typical set up from one of their live events. Note how the resolutions grow from those suitable for mobile phones to HD TVs. Also important to the viewer experience is the way the bit-‐rate never doubles between different renditions. This is because network conditions can change dynamically and cause whatever player the viewer is using to hop to the next rendition (either higher or lower). Experience has shown that large changes in bit-‐rate cause discontinuous changes in picture quality when this happens which can be distracting to the viewer. Remember that you want them to be engrossed in your content, not looking for compression artifacts!

Table 4: Example Stack of Different “Renditions”

Resolution, WxH Bitrate, kb/s 384x216 400 512x288 700 640x360 1,200 768x432 1,700 960x540 2,200 1280x720 3,500 Total = 9,700


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Note how high the total video bandwidth requirement is for this stack. Padding this for TCP/IP overhead means you’ll need a 12Mb/s uplink from your DSL if you were to make all the renditions at the venue. Whereas the approach of mastering to the cloud can reduce your uplink requirements by approximately 2/3rds.

Bandwidth and Distribution Although it is possible to arrange your own streaming infrastructure, explaining how to do this is beyond the scope of this paper.

Figure 5: The Main Distribution Options

Remember that you have a separate TCP/IP connection for each viewer. To reach a large or geographically distributed audience you need a scale of server power that’s not practical for most content creators to provide for themselves. This is the DIY option.

Another option is to use a CDN such as Akamai, or Level 3, or many others. Think of these as being the bulk carriers of the Internet. By siting data centers around the world and connecting them to the Internet backbone, and mirroring content across them, they can deliver it quickly to consumers. CDNs take care of delivering many types of internet traffic and are not necessarily optimized for streaming video.

The other choice is to use a Streaming Service Provider. Example companies are NeuLion, DaCast, and Livestream, though again, there are many others to choose from. These are optimized for streaming video, and some specialize in certain genres such as music or sports. They often use CDNs for actual delivery, but provide value-‐added services such as taking a single stream from your live venue, and

• Content Distribuoon Network • E.g. Akamai, Level 3 • Bulk carrier. Not parocularly opomized for AV CDN • Streaming Service Provider • e.g. NeuLion, DaCast, Livestream • Opomized for AV. Value add services (trancoding transraong, mulo-‐device repurposing, moneozaoon) SSP • Do It Yourself • Adobe Flash Media Encoda + Amazon hosted Web Servers or Wowza DIY


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creating the multi-‐bitrate, multi-‐target versions of it required to serve all the different viewer profiles out there.

An important additional service and one covered in more depth later is monetization. SSPs will let the content creator or rights holders choose among several options such as: ad supported, subscriptions, and pay per view to turn content into money.

Once you’ve decided how to distribute your content, you need to ensure that it has the best chances of being delivered reliably by following a few practical guidelines.

Guidelines for Reliable Delivery • Although important, the bandwidth available on the uplink from the venue does not fully

characterize your connection to your distributor. Ping times are just as important. These measure the latency or delay of IP packets between the venue and your distributor’s ingest point. Lower numbers are better, with anything above 50ms likely to be problematic.

• Ensure that you are connecting to your distributor’s closest ingest point. This is a great way to minimize ping times. You’ll be able to find out where the nearest ingest points are by asking your CDN or SSP. Be careful if you’re production is on the road, that ingest point in LA isn’t going to be the best option for a venue in Boston! So check your streaming configurations regularly to ensure that old settings are not being used.

• Streaming video is subject to a lot of compression of the sort that exploits the differences between successive pictures to reduce the amount of data transmitted. This means that you should test your uplink with video that contains as much motion as the content you intend to produce. If you test with stills, but produce a soccer match, you may find that your uplink isn’t as adequate as you thought.

Securing Your Content There are three mutually reinforcing technologies that can be used to protect your content against unauthorized use:

• SWF Hash tags, which restrict your content to authorized players. • Token Authorization. This makes links time-‐out and prevents sharing. • RTPME/HTTPS. These use encryption so that you content cannot be intercepted and copied.

All of these should be provided by an SSP.

Producing Social Media When producing live events, there’s truly “no time like the present”. But your live stream is simply the most important of your outputs. You can build larger audiences during your show by sharing photos and clips, including those from angles that didn’t go to air. By posting these to your twitter feed, Facebook page, or YouTube channel you encourage and enable your viewers to share content they think is cool with friends who can then tune into the live stream.


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This need to publish content around local and remote networks immediately is new and live production has to provide a lead into what is uncharted territory. Logically, the one single best place from which to make these deliveries is the production switcher itself because it sees and hears all the live content.

Test! This is probably the most important component of a successful live stream. Best practice means doing a dry run of your production the day before going live. For events that draw big crowds, and when it’s likely that other media producers could show up on the day, be aware that you may not get the same performance out of your ISP as during the dry run. For this reason, make sure you plan enough time to reconfigure your streaming profiles and verify that they work well before the start of the event.

Also look out for ISPs that test out well on tools such as speed test, but then dial down the bandwidth they provide after 30 minutes or so connection time. The best way to verify the bandwidth your ISP is supplying is to time the transfer of a huge file.

§

So far we’ve presented a practical guide on how to create a technically excellent live stream that has the production values, features and smooth delivery that will engage your viewership. In the next section we’ll explore the options and trade-‐offs available should you wish to monetize your content.

Commercializing your Content As we remarked in the introduction, the Internet has brought about a fundamental change in the economics of content creation and distribution. You do not need multi-‐million dollar production or distribution capabilities for your content to be financially successful. Nor is financial success predicated on reaching the millions of viewers that the traditional TV infrastructure has been created to serve. Small viewerships of a thousand or so can be enough for viability. This is the so-‐called “long tail” of content where there are audiences to build and revenues to be made using products and services that already exist.

Linear ads, are just like TV commercials, they interrupt the programming, and are probably the first way content creators think about when it comes to monetizing content. Here we’ll show that, while ads have their place, there are alternatives that can be better for you and your audience.

What’s a CPM? Consider this sequence of letters: I, V, X, L, C, D, M. Congratulate yourself if you recognize these as Roman numerals with “M” representing the number one thousand. CPM is an acronym meaning “cost per thousand impressions”. An “impression” is created when someone watches an ad, clicks thru a banner, or finds junk mail in their mailbox. CPMs are the currency of ads, but they’re not all created equal! The value of your CPMs, i.e. how much you can charge an ad service depends on the value of your audience to the advertiser. The broadcasting equivalent is cost per minute.

Some reference CPMs (Ellis):


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• $95 for banner ads served on www.wealthmanagement.com. This is a site frequented by high net worth individuals that are highly valued by advertisers selling investment products.

• $13-‐90 for a 30s spot on Hulu.com during primetime. • $42 for mobile sports content. • $6-‐7 for typical low traffic website with an Alexa rank above 300,000. • TV primetime equivalent is approximately $40

What’s an Alexa Rank? An Alexa Rank is a single figure way of comparing the volume of traffic between web-‐sites. Alexa use a variety of tools, including web-‐crawlers, and a toolbar installed in over 2M web browsers to measure how often sites are being visited.

The sites are rank-‐ordered, Table 5 shows a few examples, so lower numbers are better. The significance for content creators is that lower Alexa ranks translate directly to higher CPMs because the more that people visit your site, the more valuable those impressions are to advertisers.

Table 5: Some example Alexa ranks

Site Rank

Google 1

YouTube 3

Yahoo 4

Linked In 14

TWiT.tv 15,054

DaCast 39,383 NewTek 41,124 You can discover your site’s Alexa rank simply by typing it into the tool provided at www.alexa.com/siteinfo.

Some criticisms of this measure are that it can be manipulated (usually by marketing companies), and that it is fairly unresponsive, taking around 3 months for changes in visitor volume to be reflected in the ranking. However, it remains popular with ad purchasers, so you need to understand how it can work for you.

What’s a Paywall? A Paywall is an alternative to linear ads. Instead of selling your audience to advertisers, you’re selling content to your audience. The basic principle is that viewers must somehow pay to access the content they want to consume. The “Freemium” model is a good way to engender this desire. The idea is to provide free content to the point that it engages the interest of the viewer who will then pay to access premium content.

There are three types of paywall in common use, each with their advantages and trade-‐offs.


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Pay Per View There are two variants to Pay Per View:

• Pay-‐per-‐download. This is the model used by iTunes. After paying a fee, or setting up a charging mechanism, the viewer can download the content. This is great for the viewer because they can use multiple devices to consume the content, and easy for the content creator to recognize revenue and analyze their portfolio of content offerings. The main disadvantages to this model are that it is unsuitable for live streaming, and the content is often subject to Digital Rights Management (DRM) which can undermine the portability of the content that the viewer values so highly.

• Pay-‐per-‐stream. From the viewer’s perspective, this is like buying a ticket to a concert or a sporting event. The content can be live or on-‐demand, so it is well suited to live streaming. The benefits compared to pay-‐per-‐download include: instant access, usually lower fees, and DRM can be avoided because the security methods touched on above can be deployed.

Subscriptions The subscription model is similar to how cable TV works today. An “access all areas” pass is granted to the purchaser in return for a monthly subscription. For the producer, this has the huge benefit of providing smooth, regular income but it comes with the challenge of retaining subscribers by keeping the content fresh and interesting. Whether subscriptions give access to downloads or streams is discretionary, with the pros and cons described above.

Linear Ads or Paywall? So which model is better? Let’s consider a one hour live web stream (which is about the average duration) that attracts 1000 viewers.

Linear Ads Paywall Assumptions Ad load comprises a pre-‐roll, post-‐

roll and 1 minute ad breaks every 10 minutes. Total 12 30s slots, equivalent to 1.1% of available time1 which is in line with measured online ad viewing. $10 per CPM, based on an Alexa rank of approximately 200k

$5 PPV 50% revenue sharing with SSP

Net Revenue $120 $2,500

Of course, these assumptions are just that. Your content may not command as much as $10 per CPM, but it may be much more valuable. Your audience may be willing to spend a lot less or a lot more than

1 Only 1.3% of time spent viewing video online is spent viewing ads, compared with 25% for TV. (Piech, 2011)


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the $5 PPV illustrated here. In either case, it will take time and marketing effort to build to an audience of the size used in this illustration. So it’s more helpful to think of these two options as a progression, rather than a dichotomy, because a great way to build an audience while keeping distribution costs low initially is to use an ad-‐supported channel. These are provided free to producer and viewer by companies including YouTube, UStream, DaCast, LiveStream and others.

Case Study, Eventstream’s The Mens’ Room Mike Dawson of Eventstream is one producer to have made this progression with his show The Men’s Room2.

This chat show about dating started life as a scripted program that was supported by ad revenue. It gradually built to an online audience of around 1600. Mike was able to dramatically cut production costs, and increase revenues by making two key changes:

• He changed it into a live show. This eliminates the costs associated with post-‐production, and also shortens production time because there are no re-‐takes allowed when you’re live! Live content is also inherently more engaging than its scripted cousin as the rise of reality TV has demonstrated. This helped Mike keep his audience when he made the second change.

• He switched to a paywall access model, charging viewers $2.00 subscriptions.

The success factors here are:

• Creating content that addresses an existing market • Growing an audience • Keeping it while reducing costs and increasing revenues by taking it live

Conclusion Creating content and streaming it live over the Internet is a large subject, and as a tour d’horizon this paper has provided you with some starting points for further enquiry. By now you should have a good idea of how to create content that is:

• Technically transparent – so your viewers concentrate on your content without being distracted by artifacts and buffering delays.

• Consumable on the devices your audience wants to use. • Trouble-‐free to produce because you’ve designed-‐out the pitfalls identified here, and done

thorough pre-‐production testing. • Effective in addressing social media outlets that are increasingly important to satisfy your

viewership.

We’ve shown that the barriers that used to exist between content creators and remunerative distribution have been eliminated by the ease and low cost of being your own broadcaster. The onus is

2 http://eventstream.ca/events/mens-‐room-‐live/


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now much more with you, the creator, to imagine, innovate, and create programming that will attract, engage and grow an audience.

Acknowledgements This paper started life as a couple of webinars delivered to SMPTE’s Professional Development Academy earlier this year (Naylor & Roskin, Live Web-‐streaming -‐ technologies, techniques and production values, 2012), (Naylor, Ellis, & Dawson, The Business of Live Web-‐streaming, 2012), and it would not have been possible to write it without significant permissions and contributions from:

Chuck Silber, COO, NewTek, Inc.

Rob Roskin, Senior manager, video operations & emerging technologies, Viacom

Greg Ellis, VP Business Development North America, DaCast

Mike Dawson, CEO, Eventstream

Joel E. Welch, Director of Professional Development, SMPTE

References Ellis, G. (n.d.). Making the Paywall Work. Retrieved 2012 йил 30-‐March from www.dacast.com: http://home.dacast.com/files/emailing_311011/making_the_paywall_work.pdf

Naylor, J. R., & Roskin, R. (2012 йил January). Live Web-‐streaming -‐ technologies, techniques and production values. From https://www.smpte.org/education/pda-‐ondemand-‐access

Naylor, J. R., Ellis, G., & Dawson, M. (2012 йил February). The Business of Live Web-‐streaming. White Plains, New York, USA. From https://www.smpte.org/education/pda-‐ondemand-‐access

Piech, D. (2011 йил July). Online Video by the Numbers. Retrieved 2012 йил 30-‐March from www.comscore.com: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/Online_Video_by_the_Numbers

Notices Copyright © 2013, John R. Naylor, All Rights Reserved UStream is a registered trademark of UStream, Inc. TriCaster is registered trademark of NewTek, Inc. Adobe® Flash® is a registered trademark of Adobe, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. YouTube and Android are registered trademarks of Google, Inc.


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iOS, iPhone, iPod, iPad, iTunes, AirPlay, and Apple TV are registered trademarks of Apple Corporation. Blackberry is a registered trademark of Blackberry, Inc. Symbian is a registered trademark of the Symbian Foundation ROKU is a registered trademark of Roku, Inc in the United States and other countries. HDMI is a registered trademark of HDMI Licensing, LLC in the United States and other countries. Wi-‐Fi is a registered trademark of the Wi-‐Fi Alliance. Akamai is a trademark of Akamai Technologies, Inc. Level 3 is a registered service mark of Level 3 Communications, Inc in the United States and other countries. DaCast is a registered trademark of DaCast, LLC. Alexa is a registered trademark of Alexa Internet.

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Live Streaming Production Distribution Monetization