The tradition in television commercial creation has been to produce the content and assemble it with many steps in between that drives the cost of an ad upward from $1,500 to $50,000.00. Today’s Internet advertiser is demanding much more however, for a whole lot less expense and innovation is required.
Production companies and their creative teams are assembling stock content instead of “shooting it” to meet the demand of low prices and quick turnaround. Where does the stock content come from? It comes from many online content production aggregators who gather content from multiple producers with feet on the street shooting footage.
One glitch on the horizon however is the supply of the content – will there be enough to go around without seeing the same footage over and over again, assembled by multiple parties? Another glitch is the content “rights” issue since most companies have licensing terms that restrict multiple usages for multiple clients by multiple internal editors. Ad production teams must look for royalty free footage that comes with an unlimited use license for low cost to keep the cost of ads down to advertisers – which in fact is rare. Read the fine print and you will find that use rights differ. Unlimited use by ONE editor and unlimited use by one client is common, but unusual is the combination of these two.
Very few content companies offer unlimited use company-wide and for an unlimited amount of clients. Most difficult to find is content that is available for use inside of any automated online ad-building software solution. Most companies restrict the latter and licensing agreements state restrictions on usage.
So, when looking for royalty-free stock footage to create online video ads read the fine print and make sure your supplier is providing you extensive rights when you buy their content. More and more companies are emerging that provide licensing rights that will allow you to make video ads for very low cost. Search at: www.royaltyfreehdvideoclips.com
