User-generated content is notoriously difficult to monetize, but it’s not a lost cause: Ogilvy Group Planning Director Gina de Mendonca says it has potential, especially when professionals play a role in curating it. De Mendonca is a partner at the advertising agency’s digital division neo@Ogilvy, where she works with clients like IBM.
"You have to think about it a little more creatively. There has to be some element of control, and that’s when it has worked most successfully," she told me in an interview after the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable . "But just broad-scale user-generated content often can be a little bit risky for some clients."
UGC video mash-ups and contests are good examples of content that can be monetized, according to de Mendonca. (Yahoo’s Jimmy Pitaro discussed the success of such mash-ups his interview with Beet).
In the segment, Mendonca also discusses other obstacles to ad spending online, such as a lack of standardized formats and analytics. "I think there will need to be a standardization of formats, that will be the first thing that happens, and once there’s a standard format that we use across some of the different ways to get video out there, then we’ll definitely get some success measures baked into that," she says.
—Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
