CBS & Yahoo Deal: Does Video Syndication Pay?

Bobby Tulsiani | June 05, 2008, 06:00 PM

On PaidContent, I came across the news that Yahoo had joined CBS Audience Network and could now start promoting and distributing the “Tiffany Network's” content across its various properties. JupiterResearch has done in depth analysis around the Internet Television Value Chain and is a strong advocate of syndicating content.

However, as I read more of the story, I was intrigued by a quote from the head of CBS Digital’s Group, Quincy Smith:

“You can’t jam anything down people’s throats ... it’s up to the content now.”

There has been a big focus on content online and getting it in front of large audience (Yahoo!, AOL, MySpace, etc), but I’m not sure the payoff is happening. So I started to look at some numbers. I decided to look at two of CBS current partners, MSN and AOL. On AOL, the latest episode of “How I Met Your Mother” had been viewed around 1100 times. MSN didn’t list views, but assuming those two properties have similar audience sizes, it should be in the same ballpark.

I’m sure we can all do the math on even 3000 views at a $50 CPM; it is not going to be showing up on CBS bottom line. Of course, the math gets very interesting if any of those 3000 viewers then started watching “How I Met Your Mother” on broadcast after watching it online for the first time. But perhaps, most noteworthy from my mini metric investigation, a clip on YouTube from the same episode had done over 12,000 views.

Plenty of lessons to learn in video from this simple exercise: short form, programming & promotion, scale, and the power of YouTube. A topic will be exploring in our upcoming report “Competing with YouTube.”