Cheap Content on the Fly

I recently read an article in the latest issue of Wired that was predictive of the direction online content production and distribution is heading. It was called "A fiendishly clever startup knows what we are Googling - then churns out thousands of cheap videos and articles to meet our every whim and wish: The Answer Factory" The title pretty much sums up the article: a media company is using algorithms to identify what people are searching for, then determines the profitablity for that query and ultimately bids out production work to freelancers, fact checkers, editors and bloggers to produce the content and publish it to their distribution platform.

What's interesting about this method is that its all predicated upon the long tail theory (coincidentally first mentioned by Wired EIC Chris Anderson). Because they filter all queries through a LTV process whereby they determine the profitability of each query based on competition and search volume most of their content relies on long tail search queries, such as Where Can I Donate a Car in Dallas?, How To Make a Breakfast Nook Out Of A Church Pew, or How To Draw A Greek Helmet? Once they determine the topic they bid it out to freelancers who could make up to $20 per video clip or $15 per article. Apparently the emphasis here isn't to provide high-quality content but to develop answers to questions people have and make money from it. It's the answer to Google. And so far it has done what its supposed to do: provide answers to some of the most common questions people have as soon as they have it. The quality of content is not a top priority either. Clearly there are some competitors to Demand Media who place a high value on quality, but for now the key to this model is to create the right content, have it appear at the right time and make money off of it.

So whats in it for content producers? No idea. $20 bucks per video probably doesn't even pay for the gas these videographers pay to drive from location to location, but in this economy I guess its better than nothing. And on top of that Demand has some aggressive goals -- upwards of 1,000,000 videos produced per month. Demands CEO (of former Myspace fame) Richard Rosenblatt's strategy has apparently been working. Not only is Demand projected to bring in $200 million in revenue this year (source Wired.com), but his aggressive production of video content has him enlisted as an informal consultant/partner to Google, where Demand already provides over 17,000 videos to Youtube (more than twice the content of CBS, AP, Al Jazeera, UMG and a few others combined). Rosenblatt has already been compared to Henry Ford for the digital era in terms of his video production efficiency, but more interesting to me is the tolerance of online viewers to accept low grade content. Clearly there is a behavior here that is different from traditional video consumption on TV and in theaters, where you can have poor content, but high quality. Online it seams the priority is reversed where content outweighs production value.

RELATED (in same issue of Wired): Ray Tintori DIY music videos for MGMT. New director getting praise from none other than Spike Jonze who's familiar with this method of content production - see Video Days (props to the version of Passing Me By by Pharcyde).

UPDATE: just after posting this article I came across this article from the NY Times about the fall and rise of media called The Fall and Rise of Media. In it is a reference to Demand Media: "Where do all the burgeoning pixels come from? Everywhere, and cheap at that. An outfit called Demand Media now tests headlines for reader salience and cranks out thousands of articles and videos daily that it pays about $20 apiece for."
Defnitely keep an eye on this company and trend...cheap content churned out fast based on real-time search query data from Google and other leading engines.