Reality Digital the Latest to Go White-Label
Reality Digital, the former digital asset management company and consulting firm that became an interactive agency building video communities for brands, is now revisiting its software side. The San Francisco-based company is launching today a white-label video publishing and distribution platform called Spotlight.
Reality Digital CEO Cynthia Francis told us in a conversation last week that her customers have been asking for such a self-serve product so they can unite their video businesses between their brand campaigns — what Reality Digital usually works on, for instance the NFL.com Replay Re-Cutter or the YouTube channels for Pepsi and HP — and their longer-term video assets. “The needs are combined, and the products have not been,” she said. “People kept asking for it. We said, ‘Why are we handing these other people money again?’”
Francis contends her product has better features, a stronger focus on socialization around content, and lower and more transparent pricing than competitors such as Brightcove and Ooyala. Reality Digital did have to build an advertising component for Spotlight, something that wasn’t necessary in the past when the content was advertising itself. I can’t comment too much on the relative quality of the product, but Francis’ in-person demo put a lot of emphasis on how easy it is to change the color of a video player — not a feature that would be incredibly important to me.
We see a lot of white-label video offerings, and it’s often the Plan B or Plan C business for a company — so it’s hard not to be skeptical of a new entrant. But Reality Digital does have a strong set of customer relationships from MTV to The Travel Channel to Hyundai. The big test will be whether those customers — who already know Reality Digital well — make the shift over to Spotlight. At launch today, the company got a testimonial out of the executive producer of MacNeil/Lehrer Production’s the.News: “The flexibility and range of functionality the Spotlight platform elevates our efforts to develop new, targeted online communities to a new level.”
Reality Digital has raised $8.8 million in funding from investors including OpenView Venture Partners.
When will NewTeeVee realize that in half the articles they show stats about how video is increasingly being viewed on the web and how online video advertising spending is up, but then turn around and question why there are more video distro companies entering this space?
I personally don’t think anyone will ever catch brightcove, but there are still thousands of companies that won’t chose brightcove and will want to go elsewhere. NewTeeVee acts as if thats a failure of a business model.
@jeffrey – I don’t disagree with you that there’s room for more than Brightcove. The question is how to differentiate. Reality Digital has the client relationships and that is big.
@Tony – The CEO is by no means dumb! That was just my observation from our short briefing. They are just getting started marketing this product — I’m sure it will be refined.
You say that the ceo talked more about how to change a player’s color. That makes no sense. It looks like their angle is that socialization of content thing. Why would a ceo not concentrate on the differentiating part of their product?
Are you saying the ceo is dumb or were you were mistaken in your reporting?