Daily Reel Joins Ranks Of Paying Video Sites
- by Mark Walsh @markfwal, December 11, 2006
Dubbed "The Daily Reel Premieres," the initiative will debut Tuesday with the first in a series of shorts from YouTube video star known as "LisaNova." The first clip offers a humorous comparison of Christmas and Hanukkah.
Jeffrey Stern, co-founder and co-CEO of The Daily Reel, declined to specify how much Nova is being paid, but said the amount was enough to cover the cost of video production "and then some." How much contributors are paid will vary depending on the scope of their deals and their standing in the online video world, said Stern.
In addition to upfront payments, video makers will get a cut of any ad revenues from the syndication of clips. The Daily Reel videos will be distributed to other sites through Revver, the video-sharing service that splits ad revenues with contributors and hosts video on third-party sites. Video creators will retain ownership of their content throughout.
"The whole idea is to push for a model in which video artists can do this in an income-generating way," said Stern, who started The Daily Reel in August with co-founder and movie producer Jamie Patricof, who also serves as co-CEO. "We're focusing on quality and treating this as a business."
The site's staff combs through content on more than 250 video sites such as YouTube and Yahoo Video, and showcases the best clips on The Daily Reel.com. The top 10 videos it posts each day include synopses and a list of credits similar to those found on film databases. "We're trying to find the best content creators out there, which is something the aggregators can't do," said Stern, a former president of Details magazine.
The Daily Reel is the latest company to begin anteing up for user-created video to attract better content--and advertisers. Video-sharing site Break.com last month boosted the amount it pays for videos to $400 from $250. For animated content, it pays up to $2000. In October, Google agreed to share ad revenue from the sequel to the popular "Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment" video with its creators. BlipTV, iFilm and Metacafe are among other video sites paying contributors for uploading content.
"If I see one trend on the horizon for 2007, it's about people saying 'What will you give me for my video,'" said Joe Laszlo, a senior analyst and research director at JupiterResearch. He expects to see an increasing number of talented amateurs and semi-professional filmmakers get paid for their videos.
"That will start driving the cost to video publishers upward," said Laszlo.
Even video-sharing powerhouse YouTube has begun to pay up. The company commissioned holiday-themed videos from some of its most popular contributors, including LisaNova, for a new Coca-Cola-sponsored promotion that enables users to send out holiday video cards. Jamie Byrne, YouTube's director of advertising strategy, declined to say how much they were paid for the holiday videos--but said it was the start of an effort to help its top video producers monetize their content.
The Daily Reel tapped LisaNova partly because of the following she has built on YouTube with a series of comedic shorts. Under her Daily Reel deal, she will create six videos that will each run exclusively on the site for two weeks before being syndicated via Revver software to about 25 others, said Stern.
He said the company plans to announce deals with other video makers over the next couple of weeks. In addition to syndicating video to other sites, The Daily Reel is also talking with wireless operators about extending distribution of videos to mobile devices.
With their entertainment industry backgrounds, the company's founders further plan to help big media companies scout Web video talent. "We've got very deep relationships within the entire Hollywood community and I think we can help to create more revenue-generating opportunities through that," said Stern.
