Anyone who has talked to me recently about online video distribution knows I have been singing the praises of TubeMogul. Founded in 2006 by online video buffs who met while in graduate school, TubeMogul’s objective from the start has been to empower online video producers, advertisers and the online video industry by providing publishing tools and insightful, easy to interpret analytics.
With TubeMogul, users upload videos once and TubeMogul deploys them to as many of the top video sharing sites the producer chooses. TubeMogul’s integrated analytics then provide a single source of metrics on where, when, and how often the videos are viewed. Best of all, this service is FREE.
As part of my love of TubeMogul’s services I contacted them to see if I could interview someone for my blog. David Burch, the Marketing Manager for TubeMogul, kindly obliged.
David Burch is 25 years old and studied at Berkeley, where he currently resides and where TubeMogul is based. His previous job was as Content Manager for an e-commerce startup in San Francisco. After briefly attending law school, he found his way to TubeMogul, where he currently heads up their marketing efforts.
The previous night someone in his neighborhood in Berkeley was singing songs in French at the top of their lungs which kept David up for most of the night. After I promised not to break into “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” during the interview…we got down to business and commenced:
Eric Guerin: So David, how was TubeMogul able to partner with so many video sharing sites to provide a solution to video deployment and especially aggregate video viewing statistics?
David Burch: Video sites are eager to make life easier for their users, and we help do that with our free distribution and analytics tools. While our CEO has the “biz dev chops,” it is our 30,000 passionate users, from CBS Interactive and Next New Networks on down to vloggers and struggling filmmakers, that are truly responsible for making these deals happen by putting out high-quality content that these video sites want to sell advertising around.
EG: How are you able to offer such a robust product for free?
DB: While there are over 30,000 free users of TubeMogul mainly made up of vloggers and small independent video production studios, our business is able to “keep the lights on” because of clients such as CBS Interactive, Michael Eisner’s new media production company, Vuguru, Next New Networks and several agencies representing the top brands in media technology and consumer products. These clients require more robust services such as BuzzTracker which allows companies to track buzz in the user generated content world or compare their brand versus their competitors by tracking videos and viewership across the internet based upon selected keywords. We even assist some of these companies by managing viral marketing campaigns and hiring production studios to create “response videos” to increase their brand recognition.
EG: TubeMogul’s industry analysis and reports are incredibly in depth and helpful to any video publisher looking to gain more information about various video sharing sites, what constitutes a view, etc. What led TubeMogul to become so forward thinking regarding this research and analysis?
DB: Thanks! Having deployed over 800,000 videos, we have a wealth of data on online video viewership and are trying to share it with the world. Since we sell the graph and not a particular video player or advertiser, our only agenda is truth.
EG: One big thing I know a lot of online video producers would find beneficial is being able to track if people watch the video to completion or the overall length of time they watched the video. Dealing with so many different video sharing sites, will this be a possibility in the near future?
DB: Getting in-player statistics like that is something we are working on, both in terms of the engineering and in getting the deals with sites. Many video sites are understandably cautious about letting us that deep into their code, but several are coming around and we expect the rest to follow, given the power of these statistics. Also, since we are becoming a nexus of sorts for online video, these deals are starting to look more and more realistic.
EG: What is TubeMogul working on now to stay ahead of the curve with online video deployment and marketing tools? Any ideas or concepts you could share?
DB: Our main focus is on more distribution venues, richer data and new features. One of our current Premium Products will be made free in August. We are also constantly querying the data to look for trends for new studies. Increasingly, journalists and advertisers are calling with questions and interesting ideas.
EG: Any new video sharing sites that are emerging or are doing things to really augment the user experience?
DB: One video sharing site that’s really doing exciting things is Viddler. They have a really cool player that allows viewers to tag and place comments or video response links anywhere along the player timeline. It really has taken the video player to another level of online functionality and interactivity for the user.
EG: Thanks David!