Advertising in July

bliptv:

As has been said many times in this space before, Web video advertising remains a roller coaster.  Web video advertising is new and immature.  This means that it comes in fits and starts, like anything that’s new.

We’ve had an amazing couple of months.  April, May and June have all been record months for advertising at blip.tv.  We were effectively sold out of all but preroll in May and June.  The only reason why we weren’t sold out of preroll is because we’ve taken a very cautious approach to it — we don’t want to screw up the viewer experience.

Network-wide advertising revenue grew 24.64% in March, 148.62% in April and 100.39% in May.  Revenues were up just slightly in June, a traditionally slow month.  Seasonality is a big factor in advertising.  Fourth quarter is generally the best, while summer is usually a low point.  Spending traditionally picks up again with “back to school” marketing in mid August.

This is all to say that we’re going to have a (comparatively) tough early July.  We’ve entered the dog days of summer.  And that’s just the way it is.  We’re going to be sold out again soon — in a matter of weeks — but we just don’t have as much to run in the first half of July as we did in April, May and June.

So you’re probably going to see a dip in your revenues and CPM for the next couple weeks.  We’re sorry about that.  Not much we can do about it.  If it makes you feel better, know that this is equally true for the dude in his garage making a Web show and huge television networks.  There’s a reason why they show re-runs in the summer.

As always our team is working hard to make shows as much money as possible.  That is, after all, how we make our money.  Our interests here are aligned.  And revenues will be climbing again — climbing fast — very soon.