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VideoBlocks Expands Its Vision, Changes Nameplates

VideoBlocks, the membership-based stock video site that succeeds by tapping into smaller users who need an inexpensive source for content, today is formally announcing a shift at the top.

TJ Leonard, who had been chief marketing officer, moves to the CEO spot. He replaces Joel Holland, the founder, who becomes the executive chairman. Far from any corporate coup, both men say that in essence the title change just formalizes broad roles they’ve already been serving.

But mainly, it lets Holland work on forming alliances with the creative community around the country to expand the business while Leonard builds revenue back at HQ in Reston, Va.

Those future deals might be interesting.

Video Blocks works like Costco, Holland likes to say. Instead of buying video stock art piece by piece, VideoBlocks offers a $99 a year membership. With that, users get to grab as many video pieces as they want. That kind of deal, Leonard says, gives VideoBlocks an enviable “artists first” vibe.

There’s a separate business for audio, another for graphics and for a now-expanding still art business that works much the same way. Holland and Leonard say the typical VideoBlocks member uses video that otherwise would cost them $12,000 a year from typical clip providers.

The company says its users downloaded an astounding 60 million clips or files in the short time it’s been around.

Holland realized the need a thrifty alternative early on. When he began dabbling with home-made videos, he found that the graphic flourishes that dressed up a short video are expensive, when obtained from standard stock video places. And he figured out that the mushrooming YouTube cadre of hobbyist and prosumer creators like him would be receptive to inexpensive alternatives to those bigger, established video and still photo services.

Now, Holland says, 80% of VideoBlocks’ 130,000 member consist of entrepreneurial companies with 1 to 3 employees, who create videos in a “real D.I.Y sense,” he says. They’re small advertising and public relations firms, local merchants, church groups and college students, and many YouTube creators.

In fact, VideoBlocks already is in use at all of the YouTube Spaces in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere around the world. It also has arrangements with BuzzFeed and Vimeo.

Holland and Leonard want to exploit that relationship with younger users. Holland intends to offer universities partnerships that would allow students to access VideoBlocks video just as easily as they can tap into school libraries. Holland says students increasingly are using videos for class projects; a VideoBlocks tie-in would build a loyal base, early.

In December, VideoBlocks also struck a deal with Discovery Channel’s Discovery Access that gives members the ability to grab as many as 30,000 documentary-like clips from the Access trove, as part of VideoBlocks’ Marketplace program. 

That offshoot to the membership lets videographers, or organizations like Discovery, offer VideoBlocks members separate video pieces, priced at $49 each. The wrinkle is that the videographer keeps all of that. VideoBlocks has already paid out $1 million through that marketplace, and its success positions itself as a videographer-friendly place.

Growing that part of the business, with other TV networks, for example is another goal for 2016, as is expanding 4K offerings, graphics and still photography.

Last month, VideoBlocks closed an $8 million funding round, led by North Atlantic Capital. Holland and Leonard say the management shift is coincidental, and was in the works even before that deal was done. 

pj@mediapost.com

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