VideoFlow, a new online video distribution and monetization network has come out of closed Beta. The company opened it’s Beta already in June to the Finnish fashion blogger community, but now it is open for all the video producer and production houses.
The service was partly build already in early 2009 and has since tried out various different models before finding its current form. You can think of the service almost like ‘Adwords for video’ that come with the platform. A amateur, semi-amateur or professional video producer can upload its content to the network and distribute in all the platform she wishes. Videoflow will not only host the videos but will include smart content sensitive advertising on the video. Here’s the best bit. You can use the platform for free and once you upload the video on your blog or media you will get paid everytime someone watches it. Videoflow will share the revenue between the producer, the publisher (the media owner) and keep a slice to themselves.
So not only is Videoflow free, but it actually pays you a revenue share to use the service contrary to say for example Vimeo, which can actually charge the publishers. Of course this means you will have a pre-roll advertisement on top of your content, which won’t work for everyone, but can be a effective way to monetize and distribute video for many smaller producers and semi-professional media outlets. Currently the producer get 25%, the media where the video is watched 25% and Videoflow keeps 50% of the revenue.
Teppo Hudson, the founder and CEO of VideoFlow told us that the company’s mission is to enable a sustainable video culture online by which he means giving a way to make a living for the thousands of people who enjoy producing great video content, but don’t have the means to build company around it.
VideoFlow really sounds a lot what Adwords did for bloggers and writers some years ago, but now the web is much more social which means the links travel a lot further and are seen by more people than before. This is especially important for videos, which normally don’t get that many views compared the text due to the time it takes to view them.
The service will first open in Finland, but will announce a European wide distribution in few weeks with a large European advertising partner. The founder Teppo Hudson and a group of angels have injected € 200,000 seed round into the company.
