According to a report by the Independent Web Series Creators of Canada (IWCC) and Nordicity presented at the inaugural Torronto WebFest last weekend web productions are on the rise.
The survey of 83 creators in Ontario found that production had cracked around $3.14 million last year with more than half of those surveyed seeing a dramatic, 50% increase in their own production over the previous year.
While the report focuses solely on Ontario it’s hard not to similar trends happening worldwide. While Canadian productions are bolstered by the existence of the Independent Production Fund 34% of the respondents still used crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter to raise at least part of their budgets. The IPF may be the big driver of the biggest Canadian Budgets but the majority of Canadian creators are still self financing like we see in the states.
The report also found that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the go to marketing tools for creators. Old fashioned ‘word of mouth’ followed closely behind. Those findings are indicative to the limited to non-existent marketing budgets we have seen in web series.
Lastly, the study reports that YouTube was still the go to platform for distribution. With the pennies we see creators earning for their views on their, its no wonder there is no room for a marketing budget.