Friday, January 18, 2008

YuMe -one to watch #3


REDWOOD CITY-BASED YuMe offers mobile advertisers an appealing proposition: focussing exclusively on video-based advertising, YuMe offers advertisers a tailored platform to stream or download video advertisements to specific channels with optional overlaying of interactive content.

Imagine, say, that you click on an advert for a Sony Playstation. Towards the end of the video, according to your operator subscriber address, an interactive overlay will provide you with the nearest store to purchase the item. Specific targeted promotions can also be included, so sales discounts can be offered at specific times of the month or year.

The company is very much in its infancy yet (it only completed its second round of venture capital financing in October 2007, raking in $9mUSD) and not on everyone's radar screen. However, in a recent Ad Focus ranking initiated by Advertising.com, YuMe managed to climb to number 37 in terms of US online consumer reach (just 3 spots behind Amazon).

If you have been following the story on Seesmic (see previous post) you will notice how YuMe is also going about monetising those yummy video channel revenues available in the future. Whereas Seesmic plans to do so via its community-led channels, YuMe is positioning itself directly at the service of advertisers through its syndicated video content channels.

Watch this space in the coming months to see whether these two models will eventually converge or whether the total revenue pie will expand sufficiently for both models to remain afloat.

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