20 Sep Studying the Profitablity of Quarterlife
In light of Jim’s earlier post about the debut of Quarterlife, I stumbled upon an article from Alley Insider that raises the question, “Will Quarterlife Make Money?”.
Interestingly this article studies the projected profitability of
the show, basing off the Business Week projected cost of $500,000 per 48 minute episode. Chop this down into the shows six 8-minute segments, and the cost is more than $83,333 a piece. The article goes on to say:
“Assuming a CPM of $15-$25, 2 ads per installment, and no ancillary revenue or costs, each segment would need to be viewed between 1.7 million and 2.8 million times to break even. In total, the installments would have to be viewed between 10 million and 16.7 million for each 48-minute episode to break even.”
To put this in scale we can all understand, the article makes a great comparison of exactly how feasible this is:
“For perspective, according to Vidmeter, the most popular video of all time is the “Evolution of Dance,” which has been viewed 72 million times. The 200th most popular video, “Football Skills,” has been viewed 4.8 million times. Using a $20 CPM (x2), each 6-installment episode of Quarterlife would break even with 12.5 million installment views—which would equal the all-time views of “How to Shower: Men vs. Women,” Vidmeter’s 55th most popular video. ”
From this article, I can’t wait to see if the cost of such high production online video can be offset by an appropriate level of viewers. Will it be able to maintain this high level of viewers over time? Will it boost MySpace’s rankings? Only time will tell.
