blip.tv: New Marketplaces Serialized Content

blip.tv is adding a new dimension to the segment of the online-video market that shares advertising revenue with creators. CEO Mike Hudack says his 8-person company is working with media buyers to create custom deals for video creators that own “independent serialized content.”

“Video creators should concentrate on creative production, not hosting, distribution or advertising sales,” he says. In August blip.tv announced that it developed license agreements with CNN and Oxygen. In what he refers to as “collective marketing,” Hudack is helping video creators increase purchasing power with larger advertisers. “We are designing a series of marketplaces in which content creators can gain access.”

Unlike Google Video – which shares advertising revenue only with creators with at least 1,000 hours of content – blip.tv doesn’t discriminate. Anyone can post video content and earn 50% of the advertising revenue that accompanies that video. Blip.tv departs from most revenue-sharing sites because it also brokers customized sponsorship deals between advertisers and video producers that have strong or niche audiences that are valuable to advertisers. It also gives creators a rare option of controlling what type of advertisement appears with their video – post-roll, pre-roll, impressions.

Hudack’s team works with media buyers to target sponsorships based on content and customer segments – whether that’s business executives of video gamers. blip.tv is also the only site that helps advertisers place contextual ads (like Google) based on specific content in a video. He is working with a partner that has voice-recognition software to marry ads to related video content.

Asked about his well-funded competitors, Hudack acknowledges watching them closely but says he’s not afraid. “We don’t have legacy models behind us, so that unties our hands,” says Hudack.

“Our job is to add as much value and maintain as slim of a presence as possible”

He also remains facile, he says, because he has a small team and lack of venture capital funding (he has strictly “angel” investors). And the video evolution, he says, will create increasing opportunities. Hudack expects a boom in vertical video sites and “carrier-neutral aggregators.”

“Video is a medium not a single business,” he says.