@ Mipcom: BBC Worldwide Fancies Sponsored Online TV Model

BBC Worldwide digital media director Simon Danker said the corporation would like to introduce sponsorship as one monetisation method. Speaking in Cannes on a panel with online video distributors YouTube, Brightcove, Tiscali and Vuze, Danker: “We’re looking to work on sponsorship – if you bring the brands we’ve got with the communities that these guys (distributors) have got, there’s real opportunity around sponsorship at the moment.”

The BBC’s international commercial arm is free to make revenues, of course, though its proposal to place ads on the bbc.com website is currently under scrutiny. It operates a branded YouTube channel, where BBC clips rub shoulders with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) ads. In the same session, Google/YouTube’s video partnerships head Patrick Walker demonstrated one of the video sharing site’s new overlay ads running on a clip of the Beeb’s Top Gear show, stating 75 percent of viewers actually click through and watch the ensuing video ad. But on YouTube’s other ad formats: “If it’s a pre-roll ad, we’ve seen major drop-off before the content is even shown – leaving the video because of the ad.”

Danker said popularity of shows varies between platforms: “On YouTube, some of the stuff that’s more culty can really do disproportionately, phenomenally well.
Shows like Strange and Invasion Earth are not big shows for the BBC but are amongst our best-performing shows on Vuze. On Tiscali, it’s Catherine Tate, Dr Who, My Family.” … “Top Gear has not gone out in Japan so we went out and did a deal with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) in Japan and now it’s one of the top-rated shows on Yahoo in Japan.”