Hybrid models are best suited to making online video pay, according to panellists at MIPCOM’s ‘Online Video: To Pay Or Not To Pay’ session. According to Spirit Digital Media CEO Peter Cowley, “the hybrid model is fundamental” to the future of online video.

Michael Comish CEO of Blinkbox Entertainment, noted that “colossal skill” was needed to make advertising-supported video platforms break even. “Unless you have huge scale, you can’t make it work on ads,” he warned. Similarly, Duccio Donate, EVP of Comcast International Media Group, described the ad-funded model as “next to impossible, unless you have a massive break-out hit on your hands, and you can’t always be chasing massive hits.”

Simon Nelson, controller, portfolio and multi-platform at the BBC, admitted that the corporation benefited from having “the best business model going; a compulsory licence fee. He admitted that even the BBC, with the power of its brand and a hugely successful website, struggled to generate mass audiences for anything that wasn’t a successful existing TV show.

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