Break Decides Its Strength is in Ads, Not Video
Break.com, the video site for men, has decided one part of its strategy is more promising than the other. Over the past two months, the company launched a men’s gossip blog, a mixed martial arts blog, and Chickipedia, “the wiki of hot women.” That’s right, they’re keeping the men part — and deemphasizing the video.
The company (like everyone and their mom, no?) is becoming an ad network, signing sites like Barstool Sports to sell alongside its own properties. Already Break has 35 million international viewers per month across the twelve sites in its network.
“When we thought about how to expand the business it wasn’t about the video world, it’s not ‘hey we can do content deals,’” said Break CEO Keith Richman in an interview last week. “Our goal was never to be YouTube, it was always to be a men’s entertainment destination — our name when we started was ‘Big Boys.’”
Break.com itself will remain a video-focused site, and is the largest single property in the network.
Half of you think it’s totally sad or and half of you think it’s totally awesome that Richman has to pitch sites with names like Chickipedia and Holy Taco, but either way he’s already got relationships with advertisers like Universal Pictures, Axe Vice, Paramount, Verizon, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, HBO, and Disney.
You might recall that earlier this month we wrote about another video site becoming an online ad network: GoFish.
Also, Break was recently in the news for soliciting striking writers.
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nice post by the way.. how are all these sites related to each other. earth2tech and gigaom and now even this blog.. same authors ? all great information with different writing styles.. great work here
Aaron on January 28th, 2008 at 8:06 am - Permalink
[...] as a video sharing site a la YouTube but shifted focus earlier this year, de-emphasizing video to become an ad network and destination site for men. In August, Break was bragging about its video ad [...]
Break Lays Off 11 « NewTeeVee on October 23rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm - Permalink