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From: Forbes - Tom Taulli |
Monday, 09 January 2012 00:00
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When Scott Button sold his ad serving firm in 2006, he could have taken some time off. Instead, he put $500,000 of his money into a new start-up called Unruly Media — a process he called “scary.”
But since then, the company has been on a growth ramp. Button realized the market for social video would be huge, and he discussed this with me in a recent interview.
As a sign of Unruly Media’s success, the company recently snagged its first round of outside capital: $25 million. The investors included Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and the Business Growth Fund.
Unruly’s technology platform is called RAMP (Real-time Amplification and Measurement Platform), and it helps major brands deliver effective social video campaigns. The audience amounts to about 725 million monthly unique users across channels like Facebook, Google’s (Nasdaq:GOOG) YouTube and Twitter. As for clients, they include biggies like Electronic Arts (Nasdaq:ERTS), adidas and Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO).
No doubt, Proctor & Gamble’s (NYSE:PG) “Old Spice Guy” social video campaign shows the power of the medium. However, Button thinks this kind of viral success is extremely tough to pull off.
“Brands have a better chance focusing on creating great content that is part of an integrated campaign,” he said. “It’s important to get people talking and sharing.”
So how much is social video growing? Well, in 2010, users shared the top 20 video ads 5.3 million times. In 2011, the figure spiked to 24.5 million.
With the Super Bowl and presidential election coming up, these numbers are inevitably going to grow even more. In fact, Scott thinks that the potential market opportunity for social videos could reach $100 billion in 10 years. A big driver is likely to be Internet TV, especially through offerings from Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) and others.
“We are still in the early stages,” Button said.
View original article here |
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