Marketing

Short, viral videos have become more than digital-age curiosities. They are a central economy of the Web and a serious business on which future media fortunes will be gambled, won and lost.
Pumped out cheaply and quickly, most Web and mobile videos make a fraction of the money of a Hollywood film. But they also carry a fraction of the risk: For their makers, a flop doesn’t break the bank — and a hit can mean everything.

Web video’s rise has sparked a growing tension for media’s most established players, who must retool and compete for a new generation of viewers on an increasingly insatiable Internet. In June, a Facebook vice president called video “the best way to tell stories in this world” and said that the world’s biggest social network, with 1.6 billion users, would be “probably all video” within five years.