By Kapil Ohri
Digital

Broadcasters gear up to monetise on social media

Zoom TV recently announced different advertising formats to monetise its video content on various sites. Other broadcasters such as NDTV plan to follow

Zoom TV, which has tied up with sites such as YouTube.com, Rediff.com’s iShare, Blinkx.com and Nautanki.tv, to make its content available across various geographies, is now all set to monetise the tie-ups through advertising.

Recently, Zoom created special channels on these sites and started uploading short duration Hindi videos ranging from five to seven minutes. A channel on YouTube.com, Zoom Dekho, with around 750 videos, was launched in February. The channel has already received 138,254 views. Similarly, a Zoom channel on iShare has around 900 videos.

Broadcasters gear up to monetise on social media
NDTV's channel on YouTube
According to Sameer Pitalwalla, head, digital, Zoom TV, “We are ready to monetise our video content available on video sharing sites, except YouTube.com, through advertising. Four different formats of advertising – pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll and overlay – will be offered to advertisers. Ads will be interactive, and a viewer can click on an ad to reach the advertiser’s website. Advertisers will be roped in to sponsor the video player. We will use Google video ad options on the YouTube.com channel.”

Pitalwalla adds, “Since 75 per cent of the audience is not based in India, we are targeting advertisers who want to reach a wider audience.” Zoom TV has already roped in some big clients from the web and telecom industry, and their campaigns will be launched in a few days.

Broadcasters gear up to monetise on social media
Zoom TV's channel on YouTube
Zoom TV has also launched 23 Bollywood related applications on Facebook.com, a social networking site. All these applications are based on Bollywood celebrities, such as ‘OMG! It’s SRK’, based on Shah Rukh Khan, which has more than 1,200 fans. Katha Films has developed the applications for Zoom TV.

Pitalwalla says, “Facebook applications will be monetised and brands which associate themselves with particular celebrities will be roped in as sponsors of a particular application.”

Other TV channels such as NDTV and UTVi have also created their channels on YouTube. The NDTV channel has around 1,400 videos, but they are still not monetised.

Sanjay Trehan, chief executive officer, NDTV Convergence, says, “We will take around three to six months to monetise NDTV videos on YouTube. There are two possibilities: Either YouTube will bring advertisers, or we will rope in marketers to advertise through our NDTV video clips.”

UTVi, a newly launched business channel from UTV, has uploaded around 50 videos on its channel on YouTube.com.

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