NEW YORK: Vimeo, the online video platform, is carving out a distinct position for its brand in a crowded category by focusing on the needs of content creators.
Anjali Sud, CEO of Vimeo – which is owned by media and internet company IAC – discussed this subject at the 2018 Techonomy NYC conference.
“Vimeo’s strategy is to look where the Netflixs and the YouTubes of the world aren’t looking,” she said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How Vimeo survives in the crowded online video space of larger competitors.)
With billions of dollars flowing into digital content from online pure-plays and legacy media brands alike, creators have a greater slate of options available than ever before.
As a result, Sud explained, these sources of original material have a pressing need to “create high-quality stories, and to do it at scale, and to do it quickly.
“And what we see in the market is that there’s really no platform that’s focused on the creator experience and how to give them really, truly innovative tools and technology to be able to create,” she argued.
While sites like YouTube and Facebook possess huge audiences and sophisticated tools for video producers, their emphasis on advertising is not always ideal for individuals and companies that want to spread their content far and wide.
“They’re ad-supported platforms … They’re media companies,” she observed. “They’re focused on distribution. And that means they have to make choices that keep content on their platforms.
“And they’re increasingly becoming more like walled gardens in an effort to do that. And that idea that creators have to choose just doesn’t work with the way we all consume video today.”
In response, Vimeo is seeking to represent an “agnostic hub” with tools for users to upload content on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, personal websites, apps, and so on, at the touch of a button.
And selling subscriptions to its cloud-based video hosting, formatting, editing, and sharing functions enables the platform to operate without ads, and thus empowers users to take a flexible approach.
“There’s a huge need for that, because the reality is we are not an ad-based business. We can afford to make those decisions. And there’s no one else out there that’s really being creator-first,” Sud said.
Anjali Sud, CEO of Vimeo – which is owned by media and internet company IAC – discussed this subject at the 2018 Techonomy NYC conference.
“Vimeo’s strategy is to look where the Netflixs and the YouTubes of the world aren’t looking,” she said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How Vimeo survives in the crowded online video space of larger competitors.)
With billions of dollars flowing into digital content from online pure-plays and legacy media brands alike, creators have a greater slate of options available than ever before.
As a result, Sud explained, these sources of original material have a pressing need to “create high-quality stories, and to do it at scale, and to do it quickly.
“And what we see in the market is that there’s really no platform that’s focused on the creator experience and how to give them really, truly innovative tools and technology to be able to create,” she argued.
While sites like YouTube and Facebook possess huge audiences and sophisticated tools for video producers, their emphasis on advertising is not always ideal for individuals and companies that want to spread their content far and wide.
“They’re ad-supported platforms … They’re media companies,” she observed. “They’re focused on distribution. And that means they have to make choices that keep content on their platforms.
“And they’re increasingly becoming more like walled gardens in an effort to do that. And that idea that creators have to choose just doesn’t work with the way we all consume video today.”
In response, Vimeo is seeking to represent an “agnostic hub” with tools for users to upload content on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, personal websites, apps, and so on, at the touch of a button.
And selling subscriptions to its cloud-based video hosting, formatting, editing, and sharing functions enables the platform to operate without ads, and thus empowers users to take a flexible approach.
“There’s a huge need for that, because the reality is we are not an ad-based business. We can afford to make those decisions. And there’s no one else out there that’s really being creator-first,” Sud said.
Sourced from WARC
