I watched a conference talk a while back about the future of branded content and it ended on a Q&A. A hand shot up immediately with this question…“I’m a producer with a lot of quality video, do you have any recommendations for how I monetise my content online?” The answer, kind of a put down which might be a little simplistic, dealt squarely with the issue that people are failing to grasp when it comes to monetising their content: “There are teenagers out there getting cheques for thousands of dollars every month from Google and You Tube. If they can work it out, and you can’t, then maybe you should try a different job.”

OK we might not yet have a generation of YouTube millionaires swanning around with Bieber cuts and smelling of Old Spice, but there’s certainly a generational difference in the approach to what content means and how to make money from it.

For a start, content isn’t just video on your YouTube channel -  it’s photos, Tweets, your Facebook page, profile, and location -  it’s where you've been and what you've done. And Generation Y are consuming all of this content on multiple platforms - their smart phones, social networks and through demand media in the form of MP3s, movies and TV shows.

What marks out the leaders of our brave new digital world is that they‘ve created new products and platforms that seamlessly unite new technologies to connect people to their friends and family, becoming integral to and making their lives easier; and then built new businesses out of those services. 

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