fagstein: ok no. usually, managers and the people requesting the website ask for more content, features, columns. if a web designer works for the CBC for instance, he doesn’t have the choice, he has to show all the elements coming from all CBC divisions. but profesional designers are taught a lot about consistency, visual hierarchy and stuff like white space before everything else. “amateur” web designers are the ones who throw in everything with no master style guide, and you get a cluttered website at the end

We understand your desire to surf in an ad-free environment, but if you had to choose between

a) surfing the web for free but seeing some ads,
or
b) paying for content,

what would you choose?

Desiring both free content and an ad-free environment is – with all due respect – unreasonable. Moreover, we do not run popup ads or obtrusive creatives, in fact, we don’t even run pre-rolls!

As per the viability of the business model, digital content has proven to become the new software: once you publish, all subsequent sales are practically all profit (unlike print content which has residual costs as distribution ramps up).

Furthermore, we do not solely rely on our distribution partners, we publish clips on WatchMojo.com and generate ad revenue there, but that is a portion of the total pie out there, so the distribution-driven revenue is a nice incremental revenue stream… plus, it’s solid branding and efficient marketing. If you compare the video market to where text was, you would see that there are advantages to being a content producer, especially when most of the video content out there now is user-generated or pirated content.

I sometimes joke that we want to be the Dear Abby of online video content: ubiquitous in every destination where video content can be accessed…

Thanks again for the coverage.

Ash