AOL has built an enormous video syndication platform which produces nearly 900 billion monthly video views for the likes of the BBC News, ESPN, the New York Times, TIME, and the Wall Street Journal. This syndication play represents about 60 percent of the AOL’s 1.4 billion monthly streams and is growing quickly, says Ran Harneveo, president of AOL Video in this session recorded at the Beet.TV executive retreat moderated by former TechCrunch editor-in-chief Erick Schonfeld.
It is this “economy of scale,” not just advertising rates, which is essential for the industry to mature and prosper, he says. He says that the future needs to be a sort of “content exchange” among publishers – who both syndicate and aggregate videos from each other.
The New York Times, The Washington Post as “Frenemies”
Also in this session is Rebecca Howard, General Manager of Video for the New York Times and Steven Schiffman, General Manager of Video for The Washington Post both address the opportunities around syndication and scale for news video. The Times has recently joined the AOL syndication platform.
In a separate interview, Schiffman posits the notion of a consortium of premium video producers.
Disclaimer: Beet Media has syndication agreement with AOL and AOL was a sponsor of the executive retreat. AP
