Startups
Move: Online Profits Approaching TV Levels
We sometimes worry if we write about Move Networks too much. But it’s an interesting startup with real technology making an increasingly significant impact on how people are entertained. And hey, when the CEO stops by your office and spews out a bunch of numbers with dollar signs attached to them, you gotta write it up.
According to Move CEO John Edwards,
- Move customers are seeing CPMs of $35 up; $70 CPMs for better networks and even up to $100
A year ago it cost at least 18 cents to transmit a gig; Move got it down to $0.10 six months ago — so it’s starting to approach the point where you can make the same money showing something on TV as showing it online
Spot Runner Raises Another $51M
TV advertising startup Spot Runner has raised $51 million from media company and private equity, bringing its total investment to $111 million. The new money comes from the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), Grupo Televisa, Legg Mason Capital Management, Groupe Arnault/LVMH, and will be used for general expansion as well as gaining entrance into the markets of its funders in the UK and Latin America.
Spot Runner has taken money from a whole lot of people en route to that total, including Allen & Company, Battery Ventures, Capital Research and Management, CBS, Index Ventures, The Interpublic Group, Tudor Investment Corporation, and WPP. It just goes to show the fundraising climate is still extremely friendly towards video plays (even if Spot Runner lands a little outside what we would call online video).
RedLasso Has Insane User-to-Unique Ratio
RedLasso, a pre-launch startup, says it had 24 million unique visitors in April. And I don’t mean pre-launch like Gmail-is-still-in-beta pre-launch, I mean you can’t actually get in through the front door of the site if you aren’t explicitly given special access. Only 18,000 people are part of its private beta.
The user-to-unique ratio is at the core of what the company does: let its users share relevant bits of broadcast TV. So that time last week when Paula Abdul flubbed her American Idol lines, or Tom Cruise came looking for redemption on Oprah, or Barack Obama appeared on Fox News, bloggers had near-immediate access to the evidence. Then they were able to embed the clips on their blogs (using RedLasso players) for everyone (that’s where the 24 million come in) to see. Beta participants include traffic hot spots like The Huffington Post, Perez Hilton, AOL, Hot Air, and Sporting News.
Jinni Raises $1M for Video Discovery
Jinni, a video search and discovery service, has raised $1 million from Israeli investment collective Startup Factory, according to Globes Online.
Jinni doesn’t have a live site, but it appears to be looking to license its personalized recommendation technology to TV and online video operators, similar to the strategy of another Israeli video discovery startup we’ve covered, Taboola. Recommendations are definitely an interesting and somewhat unexplored aspect of online video, but we haven’t seen significant business development to back up this licensing model. You might be better off competing for the Netflix prize.
Vusion Makes HD Web Video Accessible
A four-year-old startup called Vusion today comes out of stealth mode, launching a streaming video platform competitive with Move Networks. I was blown away by a demo over my dinky home Internet connection — the service is responsive, instant, and incredibly high quality (see showcase).
Vusion said it requires broadband download speeds of 1.5 Mbps for 480p videos and 2.5 Mbps for 720p videos, making it fairly widely accessible. Akamai, by contrast, told us last year it expects only 10 to 20 percent of end users to have good enough connections to have a good experience watching its own HD offering.
As usual for these services (other competitors include GridNetworks and Digital Fountain), end users will need to download a small piece of software to manage video delivery. On the plus side, Vusion does support Macs at launch.
OMG! GodTube Raises $30 Million
Holy (expetive), the YouTube-for-the-religious site GodTube has raised $30 million, according to paidContent. The money came from hedge fund GLG Partners and the valuation for this round was approximately $150 million. GodTube had previously raised $2.5 million from private investors (see our previous coverage).
This funding round puts GodTube in company with the likes of Veoh ($40+ million raised), Brightcove ($59.5 million raised), and Tudou ($85 million raised). GodTube’s holy haul also adds to the more than $217.3 million video startups have already raised this year.
GodTube says it has 2 million users a month, though public measures put the site’s traffic on an even more modest (and downward sloping) level.
Wonder if J.C. got any options.
Updated: Akimbo Layoffs
Rumors hit the web yesterday that Akimbo laid off nearly all of its staff, save for the executives. A spokesperson for the company has confirmed that there were layoffs, but could not provide specific numbers. The rep did say that the layoffs were focused on legacy aspects of the business like content aggregation, and that currently, additional dismissals weren’t expected to be made.
UPDATE: Akimbo laid off approximately 10 people from content operations, QA engineering and admin. We’re also told that the CTO has brought in a new team, so a few folks have been hired over the last couple of weeks and the staff headcount is now at 20 people. The layoffs were said to be reflective of the company’s shift in focus.
Hulu Brings NBC (and FOX) Back to YouTube
Hulu, the network-approved and operated online video service, was conceived as a “YouTube killer” — a way for big media to go to the Internet on their own terms. But now things have come full circle. Hulu, the launch of which prompted its parent NBC to pull down all its content from YouTube, has now started a YouTube channel of its own — with NBC’s (and FOX’s) blessing. The LA Times first posted about this last night.
The channel was put up on March 3, just prior to Hulu’s public launch, and contains clips from shows including Family Guy, 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live and The Office, all less than 3 minutes long. Hulu isn’t a formal YouTube partner, just a member like anybody else. The only ads are for Hulu itself (in fact, everything is liberally sprinkled and overlaid with Hulu logos and promotions).
But a little good content goes a long way on YouTube, a.k.a. the land of people pointing camcorders at their TV sets. The channel has about 4 million views (mostly for Family Guy clips), making it the 68th most-viewed channel on all of YouTube this month. And that’s with just 37 total videos.
One True Media Launches Video Ad Maker
Online video editing startup One True Media caters primarily to MySpace kids and home-video making moms. It has 3 million registered users, 70,000 new videos per week, and 4 million video views per week. But after noticing an increasing number of businesses using its service to create how-tos and customer testimonials, the company is launching a new small business video ad creator called SpotMixer.
SpotMixer uses the toolset One True Media has spent years refining for the extremely non-technical user, along with business-specific templates for pictures, video, and marketing copy. It’s free to create an ad, then $79 per month to use it. I’m not much for highly simplified tools — they’re always missing exactly the feature I want — but one really nice part of the offering is that you can auto-submit your ad to your AdWords (or YouTube) account. And if SpotMixer can work out the deals, you’ll even be able to submit your ad directly to play on television.
Q&A: SaysMe’s Lisa Eisenpresser
Earlier this week we briefly mentioned that a new company called SaysMe had raised a first round of funding. The company helps regular people get their political ads on television, which sure sounds like an open can of worms to me! To find out more about how this might play out, we spoke with SaysMe co-founder and CEO Lisa Eisenpresser, a long-time online media entrepreneur.
An edited transcript follows.
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