Crowdsourcing in the Production of Video Advertising: The Emerging Roles of Crowdsourcing Platforms

Abstract

Traditionally, the production of video advertising has been – and still is – carried out by the creative services of advertising agencies. But many argue that this process is too long and costly: one of the suggested solutions is to use crowdsourcing as a way to generate video content for brands. The “creative core” of decision-makers in the production of video content are increasingly becoming open to creative input from the outside, and online creative platforms are becoming a new venue for these creative individuals to create for brands. This chapter argues that the video advertising industry is undergoing a fundamental change with the advent of a new set of intermediaries that we will call creative crowdsourcing platforms. Similarly to the transformation that happened in the movie industry around the 1950’s, when the movie business went from being controlled by big studios to become an individual-based ecosystem where actors, directors, screenwriters all became freelancers, we argue that the video advertising industry is being transformed by this trend of crowdsourcing. Based on a multiple case study methodology, we attempts to explain what role crowdsourcing plays in the contemporary video advertising landscape. We first define crowdsourcing and differentiate it with related concepts like traditional outsourcing, open source projects or user-generated advertising. We then describe how the use of crowdsourcing has evolved over time, shifting away from the initial amateur focus to becoming an integral part of the advertising production process, involving freelance video advertising professionals. Finally, we describe four models that are currently used by crowdsourcing platforms to create video content for brands, illustrating that the crowd can be solicited in different ways of the production process today.