Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Verizon, and Others Have Decided Their Battleground

In the coming scrum, all major internet giants are ready to compete now. It is a fight for video footprints especially when it comes to off-network video distribution and monetization. In the past few years, this has heated up significantly driven by expensive acquisitions.

Similar kind of fight had taken place during the heyday of display advertising market and this has been the reason for success for many big names such as Google, Yahoo, TechCrunch parent AOL and few more. Initially, these companies had started to sell their own internal inventory but later expanded to serve ads on the long tail internet at large. As a result of which top 35 display ad sellers account for roughly 85% of total digital advertising revenues. That might be heavy, but the same market share is held by the top 5 companies hitting the list at online video destination.

The video has just started to see its own distribution hub. Till date the major issue has been the lack of available inventory. Most high traffic video destinations are YouTube and Facebook, or TV brands like ESPN, CNN or Fox Sports. There are very less number of pure-play video publishers and places where most users spend their time has almost no video. Focus has drastically shifted towards bringing video in the mainstream. Here world’s digital big names-Google, Twitter, Facebook, Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo, AT&T will shortly start a battle.

Google will be the first one to do so and followed by others. According to a report, the biggest search engine is on its way to complete a YouTube video syndication that will further allow its existing publishers to create new video inventory so that Google can sell them. Yes, you are right. The source of that video will be YouTube of course as it is the world’s largest repository of the video, but it was been far behind the ball on monetizing its video trash.

Not just Google but Yahoo is also pushing itself towards the three-legged stool with its purchase of Brightroll though it lacks extended publisher network across which to distribute videos. Similarly, Comcast and AT&T are on the verge to join the league but they are yet to figure out their game plans.