It's the last thing we need after a couple of very turbulent years, but the fact is that the world economy is shaky. If you're looking for new sources of revenue to help your business cruise through rough times, consider monetizing your media library.

By offering more ways for customers to access and use your content, you can increase the odds that you’ll be able to maintain revenue even if economic conditions deteriorate.

In this article, we’ll explore two powerful strategies you can use to monetize your media.

Let's jump into it:

Strategy #1: Add a Digital Storefront to Your MAM

Selling access or usage rights to your media from the same place you manage it makes a lot of sense. If you're already using a media asset management (MAM) solution like iconik, your customers can find exactly what they want using media asset metadata that's already in your MAM system. This offers a better search and discovery experience and will help them to discover the related content.

For a creative agency, this could mean that a collection of niche stock images or b-roll footage with commercial license rights will generate revenue as customers browse your albums. For broadcast rights holders like Carson Entertainment Group, this meant placing decades of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (approximately 4000 hours) at its customers' fingertips with Digital Media Hub (DMH), which resulted in a 23% increase in licensing revenue.

Interested yet?

The iconik & Digital Media Hub Integration

With the iconik+Digital Media Hub integration created by Veritone, you can easily add a storefront to allow users to license content in iconik and have more ways to manage your media and share it with others. 

“Media and entertainment companies have long struggled to monetize all of their content, from archival to live event footage. Now, with Veritone Digital Media Hub’s robust, AI-powered commercialization features, organizations using iconik’s media management solution will be able to quickly and efficiently set up their own digital marketplaces and speed the path to monetization.”

Ryan Steelberg, President, Veritone.

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The beauty of this is that it doesn't require much technical knowledge to add a DMH storefront on top of iconik. Aside from Veritone's enterprise AI features available with DMH, it also offers:

• E-Commerce/In-House Licensing: Flexibility for rights holders to configure Digital Media Hub for media asset purchases.
• Content Activity Reporting: Track content activity through downloads, changes to metadata, research, and more.
• White-Label User Interface (UI): Customize your Digital Media Hub according to your brand and style.
• Comprehensive Transcoding: Supports various packaging needs across different file types with the ability to customize delivery targets based on specific needs.

This integrated solution allows you to go from media creation to management to monetization in less time. And time is money, so your wallet is getting fatter already!

But we’re not done.

Strategy #2: Create a Streaming Service

Over the past couple of years, streaming entertainment demand has increased significantly during and after the pandemic. This has led to more people subscribing to streaming services and watching more content. 

Providing your own streaming service can provide a stable source of income. It can also help you build a loyal following and increase your brand awareness. Owning your own platform also gives you more control over your content and how it is distributed. 

An "over-the-top" (OTT) service delivers streaming media over the internet without the need for a third-party broadband provider.  

"The global over-the-top services market is projected to grow from $44.54 billion in 2021 to $139.00 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 17.7% in the forecast period"

Fortune Business Insights  Read more

New players in the streaming wars include broadcasters, rights holders, network and connectivity providers. If you have great content, and can make it easy to view, there will be people happy to pay for it.

Solutions like Zype offer an easy way to create your own streaming app, which can help you generate additional revenue. With Zype, there is no need to worry about the technical aspects of setting up your app – everything is taken care of for you. Within a short period of time, you can be on your way to raking in recurring revenue from your content. 

Monetizing media libraries in an unstable economy could be what sustains many professional content creators and media companies during the coming years. And when you can leverage what you already have by adding one of the solutions mentioned here, it's a smart way to prepare for uncertain days ahead.