If You Embed It, They Will Come

Andrea Chalupa writes: As I said last week, online video may be recession proof. Today, a bunch of online video execs (Mike Hudack the CEO and Co-Founder of Blip.tv, Andrew Heyward former President of CBS News and now Senior Advisor of Marketspace LLC/Monitor Group, to Victoria M. Brown co-founder of Big Think) sat around a table at Rockefeller Center for Beet.TV's Online Video Summit and discussed ways to make sure that's true. The full three-hour conversation can be heard here. But if you don't want to listen to the whole thing, here are a few of the highlights:

* Embed, and they will come. Fred McIntyre from AOL talked about embedding as a critical component to video discovery -- that the biggest problem in online video is simply finding it. Adam Berrey, senior VP at Brightcove, echoed this sentiment, adding that most people consume online video like it's a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Berrey advocates keeping audiences' eyeballs by providing context for a video; so, embed.

* The dog and the skateboard, or that's industry speak for user-generated-content. For all of the industry buzzwords and attempts at understanding monetization today, the funnier moments came down to what makes good content. As Mike Hudack of Blip.tv pointed out, videos showing "how-to's" build dedicated, but small, audiences willing to sit through TV-length episodes.

* And now, monetization. Despite a supposed clamoring of video inventory by advertisers, Next New Networks is taking a sponsorship approach to its thirteen online "TV networks" targeted at specific audiences. For ThreadBanger, a "network" for people who make their own clothes, signed just one sponsor, Janome Sewing Machines. Tim Shey, co-founder, claims his company makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a month with this approach.