Vidooly is the first and only self-serve Youtube Video advertising network of India. Vidooly provides a platform for media & marketing agencies, brands, indie artists, movie studios and internet marketers to promote their videos on blogs, social networks, mobile apps, social games. Simply one can say that Vidooly is like Google adword for promoting ones YouTube video online.
Starting a campaign with existing video ad-networks takes around 15-20 days, they are not self served. Most of these ad networks only work with big brands who can actually give a minimum ad spending commitment during the campaign. But for a small brand, it is very difficult to sign up with them.
If someone wants to promote their Video on YouTube only then it is costly, limited within YouTube network, most of audience has interest towards fun & entertainment where as Vidooly is cost effective medium and has wider targeting facility in connected multi platforms & devices. Your video will be promoted across Facebook games, mobile games, apps, blogs & websites. Second this is most of this promotion happens in the form of a pre-roll and majority of the people skip the video after watching it for the initial 5 seconds.
There is no minimum budget commitment to start a campaign with Vidooly, anyone can start a campaign at any budget- while other ad networks don’t work like this.
Existing ad networks have their own streaming & player which is a big problem for low internet connection. But in case of Vidooly, they support only YouTube video. It is compatible across any device & platform. Important thing is they do not provide only views, more over they sell both views & engagement on the video. If one has a good content, people will like it, share it & comment on the YouTube video which will help them to go viral and at the same time they help to increase the subscriber base, facebook page like & web traffic.
Currently most of the marketers are ROI driven & they don’t want to spend money only for brand activity. They expect a lot from their campaign. In case of Vidooly, they help video marketers to optimize their campaigns. They provide a Call To Action buttons like Subscribe Now, Facebook page like, Signup button/lead generation etc which will help advertisers to achieve their ROI meet along with brand activity.
In short they are providing a cost effective medium to advertisers to get real targeted views on their video with high level of engagement. The team has their API for publishers to have our advertiser’s videos appear natively in the apps, thus driving more engagement. Best part is, advertisers can track their campaign in real time on their analytics.
We speak with Kumar Arayan, VP Marketing Vidooly to understand more about their journey, challenges and the monetization plans involved. An MBA graduate from CIMP Patna, he looks after the sales, marketing & acquisition at Vidooly.
Journey so far
Kumar Arayan, VP Marketing
Vidooly initially launched as Vidoofy as private beta in the month of August the previous year. During their private beta launch, they had attracted 150+ advertiser signups on the platforms and more than 1000 publishers. Then Vidoofy rebranded to Vidooly this month. Currently they have 1000+ publishers in their network & 30K + publishers in 3rd party network.
Vidooly was previously known as Vidoofy. However, since there is a popular mobile app called Videofy.me, and as they are going global soon so due to brand name conflict the team had to change the name to Vidooly from initial stage. Most of advertisers and publishers were confused with their name and even Google- so it was a much needed change indeed.
Vidooly is absolutely self-funded by the team’s sweat and blood! So far now, they have successfully done 5 campaigns this month and accepted money offline. The objective from the very beginning was to drive the company through customer’s money.
Target Segments
Currently the entire team is more focused on specific category and Indian market in next 6 months. They are testing their product in Indian market for the next 6 months, and once they hit their target in some specific category they are all set to launch it in Europe & U.S market as the online video ad spend is more in these markets. Even they are getting very good traction from U.S markets. Some leading ad networks like Solvemedia, Adkarma have approached to partner with them in the U.S market.
As currently they don’t have high bandwidth to focus on each and every category, which is why they are focusing only on entertainment & lifestyle segment. Their target is to serve 200+ indie artists & small time film makers to promote their video songs/albums/movie trailer online in next 6 months.
The challenges involved
Challenge 1: Small is not always beautiful:
They are now a very small ad network platform in the market. They want to expand it to big wider geography and audience. As they are a self funded startup, they are unable to achieve this goal in short period.
Challenge 2: External funding
They have not managed a single external funding for their company. To grow exponentially like InMobi, they need funding.
Challenge 3: Great team
Currently, they are a small team, 2 full time & 3 working as part time. It is difficult to build a good team. Not only good, but experienced people who are coming from ad-tech background are needed.
Marketing strategies
Currently the team has focused on content marketing strategy through their blog and this has worked very well. They want to focus on this strategy until they have a budget to acquire customers through online ad spending.
The monetization plans
As they are at very early stage in market, it is difficult to raise some funding until they achieve some level of milestones. Some people approached them and the team is still in touch with them. The main objective is to build a global product and increase number of paid customers. They believe, if they are on the right path, money will find them.They have seen most of entrepreneurs spend a lot of time in raising funds and at the end of day they get frustration if things don’t work out. The Vidooly team is very much happy on their stealth mode operation.
With so many people going the crowd funding way like Pebble raised Crowd funding and they have considered it to be a good option. However, the amount of funding they are looking for is little more and hence they would prefer to go for institutional or angel round after achieving their planned milestones.
TTP’s take
We strongly believe Vidooly has all the ingredients to make a successful startup – Idea, Execution and Great Team. Having prior experience of working in Startups and a close understanding of the Investor’s mindset are their intangible assets while working on Vidooly. We wish Vidooly team all the best!
