Video Site OVGuide Dives Into Advertising
ADOTAS – New kid on the block OVGuide is swiftly forging alliances and making its mark on the online video world. Officially launched a year ago, the hybrid online video search engine/video site directory organized by verticals, currently boasts about 10 million unique users a month.
Confident in its strong user base, the company is ready to start monetizing its product through a new technology platform it has dubbed Relevis. Currently in beta, Relevis aims to perfect a user’s search results and deliver highly accurate contextual advertisements. (The company is experimenting with formats, but there will be no pre-roll ads. Most likely, the site will boast several forms of display ads).
OVGuide was founded by Dale Bock. A year ago the co-founder of GeoCities, David Bohnett, stepped in to fund the company and take over as CEO. The wait to unleash Relevis was strategic – Bohnett wanted a hardcore fan base in all of OVGuide’s categories (covering everything from food & wine to guns & ammo) before attempting to hit users with ads – relevant or not.
“Our user base is growing, but people keep coming back because we remove the problem of knowing sources for videos people want to see,” Chad Cooper, director of marketing and editorial at OVGuide, told ADOTAS. “People may know the category or the keyword or the name of the show they’re looking for, but they don’t know what network site to go to to find it.”
Networks and “traditional” online video sites are eager to work with the OVGuide – Hulu alone got traffic of about 1 million users from the OVGuide, Cooper said. And NBC is planning to launch an ad campaign for “Heroes” on OVGuide shortly.
Advertisers are excited to see an equal male/female demographic that covers the 18 to 55 range – an aberration in the online video world.
“We’re still in beta, but we’re already working with Time Warner Cable, Virgin America and a ton of agencies,” Cooper said. “They see our loyal users, our ability to target users in a variety of ways and click-through rates of between 0.5% and more than 3%.”
One of the reasons users keep coming back, is that OVGuide doesn’t just rely on technology. Human eyes are crawling sites, gathering cool videos and loading them, Cooper said. “We’ve solved a great pain in the industry by taking the source out of the equation. We send our users to the source.”
As Relevis comes out of beta, the company will likely hire additional ad sales staffers. And if all goes well, the company plans to open offices in London and New York. Currently, the site is developing a guide in Chinese.
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