Live streaming is becoming an increasingly popular method of generating content. It is valuable for businesses and their brands as it allows the customers to get a closer connection to them. It’s useful for a variety of audiences from those trying to get their name out on the world wide web to businesses. Live streaming is a medium of content (video) that is very popular.
Live streaming does however come at a cost. Some larger organisations will seek sponsorship, product placement or similar to make the stream available to their audience for free. Covering these costs however, is not always that straight forward or may not be relevant to your audience or business plan.
Pay Per live stream – What is it?
Before we start answering the question it would be helpful to know what we’re talking about. Pay per View (PPV) is what it says; someone will pay for a view, whether it’s you the customer or a brand trying to advertise.
There are a number of ways to set up a pay per view live stream model:
- You might have to pay to access the content altogether, a bit like big sporting events where you sign in to a private access area.
- You might have to view adverts being screened prior to popular content much like on YouTube.
- Businesses will sponsor a live stream and instead of using a ‘pay wall’ or adverts, their branding will be well placed in a video to associate themselves with popular content.
Is PPV live streaming necessary to the future of the medium?
The short answer is unclear. No, live streaming will not be subject to PPV because it is too valuable a source of content for its creators. It suits those generating content to produce this material at no cost to its audience. Think press releases, blogging tips and up-to-date content that give more value to fans and customers.
However, people do need to make money and live streaming does come at a cost to the creator. Content can’t be made free forever and even well known figures make money through PPV/PPC (pay per click). Whilst it isn’t actually an example of live streaming, we can use YouTube as a good example of PPV. All the most popular videos come with adverts attached at the start of the clip.
How long until a lot of live streaming services implement this approach? How long for example until Facebook Live will place short adverts before the most popular videos?
In order to provide longevity of live streaming there has to be a compromise
The popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Spotify point towards a very bright future for live streaming, its popularity will soar in the next few months and years. At the moment the majority of content is not being monetised but the free service can’t go on forever.
Whether you like it or not, the Pay Per View Live stream model is coming and there are two ways of viewing this. You could complain and moan about intrusive ads or you can see it as a small price to pay to access exclusive, immediate and sometimes brilliant content at the click of a mouse.
To discuss Pay Per View live streaming for your upcoming event, call us on 0121 667 8977 or email info@redshellproductions.co.uk