Digital Video in 2012: Explosive, Volatile, Maybe Even Amazing. These are heady times for online video.
The ad market is expected to grow about 50 percent this year and over 40 percent next year, per eMarketer. YouTube is throwing $100 million into nurturing new talent and programming. More big-name producers and Hollywood actors are gravitating to the medium to produce pet or experimental projects. Ad networks continue to drown in venture capital, and the technology for ad targeting keeps getting more sophisticated. That said, the online video industry has plenty of challenges. A new breed of Web-native content companies have emerged — companies like Machinima, The Collective, Deca and Maker Studios — that have mastered programming and audience building for the YouTube platform.
The digital living-room battle got serious in 2011, and in 2012 it goes nuclear. NBC has programmed for 60 years, and it can barely crank out half a dozen hit shows each fall. Video ad spending is growing at a rapid clip. Xfire - Gaming Simplified. Xfire. Xfire is the leader in social gaming services for core gamers.
In July of 2012, Xfire passed 22 million registered users. Xfire was founded in 2003 and acquired by Viacom in 2008 for $102 million. In August 2010 Xfire was spun out of Viacom by a private team of serial entrepreneurs and internet investors, including: Brock Pierce (IGE, Affinity Media), Mark Donovan (Titan Gaming), and William Quigley (Clearstone Venture Capital). The new team brings a wealth of experience, energy and focus that will further solidify Xfire’s leadership in the gaming space. Xfire.com 343,674 UVs for December 2011. Smaller Studios, for the Smaller Screen. Maker Studios. Maker Studios. Maker Studios. Maker Studios. Maker Studios Raises $1.5M For Creator-Founded YouTube Studio. Maker Studios has been relatively quiet as it ramps up its staff in its new Venice, CA homebase, building out a veritable powerhouse of top YouTube creative talent.
Now word comes that the studio has raised around $1.5 million in funding in a round led by Greycroft Partners and GRP partners. Mark Suster, a partner at GRP partners (and host of web show This Week in Venture Capital) is also listed as a Board member in a recent SEC filing for Maker Studios. Maker Studios: The YouTube Savants Talk Channel Expansion. VidCon revels in YouTube - Entertainment News, Technology News. One by one, the top executives at YouTube took turns taking the stage Friday at Century City’s Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel to give an overview of their business.
But this presentation wasn’t for entertainment execs or shareholders; it was made to a mostly teenage crowd of 2,500 who rarely let a minute go by without unleashing screams of delight. Though YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar might have hoped they were cheering him, the deafening peals were more likely directed at some of the site’s biggest draws, from Buck Hollywood to Mystery Guitar Man, who joined him to tout YouTube’s latest developments. Welcome to VidCon, a three-day convention that ended Saturday celebrating the raucous subculture surrounding YouTube, where the consumers and producers of the Web’s most popular videos are often one in the same.
“You guys don’t just watch the news, you make the news,” Kamangar told the crowd, predicting they would give rise to the next CNN or MTV. Yet the YouTubers are still making money. (Exclusive) YouTube's New Strategy: Create a Network Of Networks. YouTube is now showing approximately 3 billion videos a day.
A growing proportion of those are shown with ads—more than 2 billion a week—and YouTube as a business is expected to pass $1 billion in revenue next year. But when it comes to making money, some videos do better than others. Professionally-produce videos attract the most ad dollars. These include videos from TV networks and major media companies, which is the low-hanging fruit, but also increasingly from Web-only video networks and studios such as Blip.tv, Maker Studios, and Revision3. A big part of YouTube’s strategy is to encourage and promote these native Web networks. Maker Studios. The digital production company seeks prospective Internet stars and gives them a stage.
A cursory viewing of any number of viral videos -- with their irreverent tone, ramshackle aesthetics and simple approach to narrative -- might give the impression that fame in the digital video world largely rests on luck. MOVIECLIPS: Movie Trailers, Previews, Clips of Old, New & Upcoming Films. MovieClips now showing on YouTube. For the past two years, MovieClips Inc. has been building a service aimed at movie buffs who love to watch their favorite scenes, whether it’s from “Scarface” (login required) or “Casablanca.”
MovieClips Inc. Now the company hopes to build a bigger audience on YouTube. MovieClips and Mountain View’s Google Inc. announced a partnership Tuesday that will bring clips like this “Gut Reaction” scene from the hit comedy “Bridesmaids” to YouTube. MOVIECLIPS Announces Partnership With YouTube to Bring the Largest Collection of Licensed Movie Clips to YouTube. VENICE, Calif.
--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MOVIECLIPS today announced a partnership with Google to bring more than 20,000 licensed Hollywood HD movie clips to YouTube. The clips will be featured in the Movie Extras on the YouTube VOD platform (youtube.com/MOVIES) and will be accessible through the MOVIECLIPS YouTube channel (youtube.com/MOVIECLIPS). “We’re excited to be working with MOVIECLIPS.com to provide users with exactly what they're looking for when they want to get more into movies on YouTube.” “We are honored to partner with Google to bring the best movie moments to an avid movie audience on YouTube,” said Zach James, Co-Founder of MOVIECLIPS. MOVIECLIPS has the largest collection of licensed Hollywood movie scenes on the web.
“Our goal is to promote the discovery of movies,” said MOVIECLIPS Co-Founder Richard Raddon. This growth is supported by Series B funding round led by MK Capital. Movieclips's Channel. Home Alone movie clips: THE MOVIE:iTunes - Play - - Digital HD - miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: CLIP DESCRIPTION:Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) keeps laying down the punishment on the would-be bandits.
FILM DESCRIPTION:Home Alone is the highly successful and beloved family comedy about a young boy named Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) who is accidentally left behind when his family takes off for a vacation in France over the holiday season. Once he realizes they've left him "home alone," he learns to fend for himself and, eventually has to protect his house against two bumbling burglars (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) who are planning to rob every house in Kevin's suburban Chicago neighborhood. Though the film's slapstick ending may be somewhat violent, Culkin's charming presence helped the film become one of the most successful ever at the time of its release. MOVIECLIPS. Armed With $7M In New Funding, Movieclips Lands Deal With YouTube To Be The Vevo Of Film Clips. Armed With $7M In New Funding, Movieclips Lands Deal With YouTube To Be The Vevo Of Film Clips We’re big fans of online movie clips site Movieclips.com, which launched in 2009 as a search engine with over 20,000 different clips from thousands of titles from the libraries of 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros.
Pictures. Today, the company is announcing that it has raised $7 million in funding led by MK Capital (a founding investor in Machinima, a large gaming publisher on YouTube). Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, Richmond Park Partners, Jeff Clavier, Naval Ravikant, Jeff Kearl, Tom McInerney, Allen DeBevoise and Gordon Rubenstein also participated in the round. But that’s not all. Co-founder Zach James tells me (checkout our TCTV interview with James on the news) that the goal was to sign a distribution deal to upload the clips to YouTube, with the blessing of the studios, which are notoriously protective with their movie content.
Ign.com 6,771,891 UVs for December 2011. IGNentertainment's Channel. Gameplay Videos, Game Trailers, Gaming News and Original Shows. Machinima (machinima_com) Machinima's Channel. Why Machinima.com Is A YouTube Success. Who's Doing It Right? How Machinima.com Got 70 Million Viewers on YouTube. YouTube video-game channel Machinima aims for the next level - latimes.com. With 125 million viewers watching more than 1 billion of its videos a month, Machinima may be the most-watched channel that's not on TV.
The specialty channel devoted to video-game aficionados — which offers game walk-throughs, gaming news, exclusive trailers and original series — is the channel with the fourth most subscribers on YouTube, itself the world's third most popular website, according to online measurement firm ComScore Inc. Machinima may represent the next best hope of programming to the so-called Lost Boys, those young male consumers, once Hollywood's most dependable audience, who are increasingly reluctant to leave their video-game consoles and Facebook pages to watch movies and TV or listen to music. It may also rewrite the rules for Internet programming.
"You could argue that Machinima is to gaming what MTV was to music in its early days," said Michael E. Kassan, chairman and chief executive of MediaLink, an influential digital-media consulting firm. Machinima.com 45,270 UVs for December 2011. Machinima.