Is the future represented by a Ninja?
I listened to a fascinating podcast today, an episode of Inside the Net with the guys behind the highly successful Ask A Ninja video podcast.
Ask a Ninja is a series of video shorts done by a couple of guys in a crappy apartment in L.A. The gimmick is a Ninja answering viewer questions. Most of the time the Ninja is flat-out hilarious, and the shows are around 5 minutes or so, which seems to be the sweet spot with online video content.
In the podcast, they talk about how exciting it was the moment they realized that the distribution problem, which had kept media tightly controlled by the big studios and media companies, now has a solution. The web allows anyone with good content and some tenacity to find an audience. Their marketing budget was zero, so much of the marketing was done through social networking sites such as the now gargantuan myspace and bebo. They’ve been doing the show for about 6 months, and now have 350,000 viewers per episode. Zero budget, zero marketing money, online distribution, and tons of talent. Today’s episode has a small ad for a new movie on the backend, so it looks like they’re starting to monetize that audience.
The tools to create video content are now accessable to anyone. The bandwidth to send a video podcast to millions can be had for as little as $30 a month. What are we waiting for?
Listen to the Ask a Ninja episode of Inside the Net here
Update: Here’s an interesting article about the social-network marketing of Ask A Ninja. Check it out here
