On the heels of WatchMojo.com crossing the symbolic 75,000,000 all-time streams mark, here are more even stronger growth numbers.
1) What summer effect?
Summer 2008 to Summer 2009: 233% Annual Growth.
A reader asked me about the 200% growth number, so here it is: in fact, we grew 233% if you look at the summer months of June/July/August 2008 to the similar period in 2009:
We’re on pace to cross 50,000,000 streams in 2009. That’s using a simple cross-multiplication formula, if you look at our growth we might do over 55,000,000, even. What will our 2010 figures look like? When 2009 started, I told myself “we should do 100,000,000 throughout 2010″, but if you ask me the same question today, I would say that is a no-brainer.
2) YouTube is the Marketmaker.
YouTube is really starting to own the video content market, in our case, they now account for 49.5% of our total streams. A year ago, they were at 30%.
3) September 2009 was our second best month ever.
What I love about our monthly video stream growth chart is that we keep setting new records, then we come back stronger to break the previous record not within too long.
When we hit 4.2M streams in March 2008, I thought we might never break that, but then in January 2009 I was running December 2008’s stats and realized: “oh, lookie here, we set a new record”. That new record took a whole 9 months to set. These days we set new records fairly quickly, and I do think this can be attributed to Metcalfe’s law.
4) 100 Million Streams by our Four Year Anniversary on January 23 2010 is Possible
As we enter October, we’re on the footsteps of 80,000,000 all-time views, which at our recent volume and growth rates - along with our countless new distribution deals - would suggest that hitting 100,000,000 all-time views by our fourth year anniversary is not impossible.
When I hired our technical advisor from Big Media, I showed him our growth rates and he forecasted that we might hit our 100,000,000th stream by Christmas. At that time, we had just crossed 50,000,000 streams. I told him he was crazy. But with hindsight, I guess this proves one man’s crazy is another man’s common sense.
It seems like yesterday when we crossed 25,000,000 cumulative streams.
Of course, it wasn’t yesterday. But the company sure has picked up its growth rates:
- 25M in April 2008 (28 months after launch),
- 33M in October 2008,
- 40M in December 2008,
- 45M in February 2009
- 50M in April 2009 (12 months after hitting 25M),
- 75M in September 2009 (5 months after hitting 50).
WatchMojo adds clients and distribution as it crosses 75,000,000 cumulative streams; on track to hit 100,000,000 all-time streams in January 2010.
New York, NY (PRWEB) September 30, 2009 — WatchMojo served its 75,000,000th video in September 2009, a mere five months after crossing the 50,000,000 mark.
While a few VC-funded new media companies have aggregated producers to cumulatively generate more video streams, WatchMojo has emerged as one of the most ubiquitous digital brands of the online video revolution, with its 5,000 WatchMojo-branded videos being streamed 75,000,000 times since 2006 across thousands of portals, media destinations, newspaper sites and blogs.
WatchMojo had over 250 videos watched by over 100,000 people; though on average, 53% of all YouTube videos are only seen 500 times over the course of their lifetime, according to online analytics firm TubeMogul.
In addition, the company also reaches over 20,000,000 consumers in the digital signage market. In aggregate, the WatchMojo brand reaches over 25,000,000 consumers each month on multiple platforms.
Over the summer, WatchMojo continued to add to its impressive list of distribution partners - which include YouTube, Hulu, MySpace, NY Post and many more - by signing on Canwest Media in Canada and nine MSN in Australia. In addition, WatchMojo’s travel content has become a staple on Verizon Central in the US.
In addition to media companies that turn to WatchMojo for evergreen and ad-friendly video content on popular culture topics, marketers are also relying on WatchMojo. For example:
- Japanese soy sauce maker Yamasa (which has been in operations since 1645) turned to WatchMojo to create an advertisement for its latest product. The ad ran online and in stores.
- Coca-Cola counted on WatchMojo for fashion videos on the Formula for Happiness microsite on MySpace which garnered over a million Friends.
The one-two punch of licensing fees and syndication revenues pushed WatchMojo to be profitable from operations in July 2009 at a time when most companies were scaling back video production and new media investments.
From Summer 2008 to Summer 2009, WatchMojo grew 200% at a time when the booming online video universe soared by 88% on an annual basis. WatchMojo’s growth has accelerated, it:
- served 28,000,000 videos in all of 2008,
- has served 45,000,000 videos in the past twelve months, and
- is on pace to serve over 50,000,000 videos in 2009.
Despite holding back distribution by favoring companies that pay recurring licensing fees to access its library of premium videos, WatchMojo will serve its 100,000,000th video by its four-year anniversary in January 2010.
About WatchMojo
WatchMojo (www.watchmojo.com) helps you become more successful by covering the people, places and things that inform and entertain you socially, personally and professionally.
Supplying the world’s largest media properties, WatchMojo is a leading producer of professionally-produced, ad-friendly, premium videos covering Automotive, Business, Comedy, Education, Fashion, Film, Food, Health, Lifestyle, Music, Parenting, Politics, Science, Space, Sports, Technology, Travel and Video Games. The company’s library of 5,000 videos generate 5,000,000 views a month, 75,000,000 all-time and reach 20,000,000 consumers each month in the out-of-home digital signage network, reaching over 25,000,000 people each month.
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And here is our monthly chart:
We also reach over 20,000,000 consumers each month in the out of home space, so our cumulative reach is close to 25,000,000 people each month!
Reading about IAB trying to come up with standards for online video advertising, I wonder: should we be coming up with standards for online video advertisements when we don’t have real standards for online video content?
Scouring through TubeMogul’s archives, I’ve realized the three main obstacles facing online video content producers are the following:
1- Most People Don’t Watch Web Video For More Than 60 Seconds
In other words, because (before even seeing this study) we knew that people would not watch videos for longer than a couple of minutes, we decided to keep videos short and sweet in the 1-2 minute range… you might ask: “well, why not create 30 second videos?”
The answer is two-fold:
a) We want videos long enough to that we can eventually justify running 0:05 - 0:30 ads, if we choose to run such pre-roll ads on our property and network, and
b) Our series are generally 5-10 minutes long (whether it is a Travel Guide on Chicago or the Seven Wonders of the World), so since we break it up into shorter clips, making them too short would create way too many videos.
2 - Online video lives fast, dies young
For example our Interview with Lady Gaga did 100s of streams initially, but now does 1,000-10,000 streams per day… the same can be said for many other videos. If you can generate streams to older videos, you pave the way to building a successful syndication business, which we have.
3 - Web series struggle to hold on to audiences
I think this is a classic textbook example of people being lazy and looking for get-rick-quick schemes. Truth is, even “overnight successes” took years to build. Our rationale has always been the same:
You have to create a mechanism where web viewers have a higher propensity to stumble on your content, the only way to do is by emphasizing quantity, quality and frequency. We talked about this in depth in Standing out from the Clutter.
This speaks for itself: our average streams per day and month has consistently grown…
What are some of the other obstacles facing content producers? Well, the lack of business model is the main one, which maybe explains why the IAB is looking at coming up with standards.
A couple of graphs capturing our growth.
- WatchMojo.com monthly streams:
- WatchMojo.com’s all-time stats:
We are crossing 45M this month, and will cross 50M in March or April.
It took us 28 months (from January 2006 to April 2008) to get to 25M streams, but we will have doubled it in 12 months afterwards, which is an amazing feat that we’re quite proud of.
We’ve also formalized some of our distribution arrangements, more details to come on those.
Our latest milestone: We’re at 35M streams now. Here’s the press release touting serving our 33,333,333rd stream sometime in October 2008:
Through a series of partnerships, WatchMojo.com streams over 33 millions videos to become one of the largest and most popular video producers online, with a library of 5,000 1 to 3 minute videos covering Automotive, Education, Fashion, Film, Food, Health, Music, Politics & Economy, Space, Sports, Technology, Travel and Video Game categories, syndicated across hundreds of sites, including YouTube, MySpace, Hulu, and many more.
Montreal, Canada (PRWEB) November 4, 2008 — WatchMojo.com served its 33,333,333rd million video in October 2008, becoming one of the most popular video producers online. It took the company two and a half years to reach the milestone. To put the 33 million figure into perspective:
In terms of new media companies, the figure ranks WatchMojo.com amongst the top video creators on the Web. Interestingly, less than 5% of those streams have been served on the WatchMojo.com property, the vast majority have been generated on the company’s syndication network, which includes some of the most trafficked video destinations online, including YouTube, MySpace, Hulu and many others.YouTube, whom the company partnered with in early 2006, has generated 45% of the company’s total streams; the popular video destination acquired by YouTube in 2007 generates over 5 billion streams each month. The rest is splintered across hundreds of destinations.
Offline, the company’s out-of-home digital network market reaches nearly 15 million unique consumers each month (or 26 million duplicated) across 1,500 digital screens in North America, according to Nielsen’s measurements.
WatchMojo.com’s content consists of 5,000 professionally-produced, ad-friendly premium videos on Automotive, Education, Fashion, Film, Food, Health, Music, Politics & Economy, Space, Sports, Technology, Travel and Video Game categories.
Through a mix of advertising revenue share partnerships and licensing agreements, WatchMojo.com has also managed to develop a business model in the otherwise murky landscape of online video, where user-generated content generates the vast majority of video streams but has thus far failed to win over advertisers.
The company is now adapting its vast collection of 1 to 3 minute video clips into programming for television and cable networks who have all been hit hard by the continued shift of consumers to the Web and the slowing economy, as well as starting to offer marketers product placement and integration opportunities.
To learn more, visit WatchMojo.com
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One of the few good things about losing money (humor me) is that the government isn’t on your back to collect taxes, so they don’t give you a deadline to close your books and submit financial statements.
After all, if you make money, you have to pay taxes… but if you lose money - and what self-respecting startup and entrepreneur doesn’t? - you don’t pay income taxes. It’s pretty simple: the government can’t be bothered with losers and doesn’t ask you to issue your financial statement - namely your income statement and balance sheet (the third financial statement being changes in cash flow) - so this gives you ample time to avoid closing your books.
However, if you ever want to set up a credit line or raise debt financing, then you need your financials to be up-to-date. “Who cares what you did in 2006… it’s 2008 already… so where are your 2007 financials?”, I was asked by our bank manager.
When I was studying finance and learning from Warren Buffett’s playbook, I thought debt was murder.
But on the operations front, it’s plain simple: we need more hardware, more software and more mindware (aka people). If I have to choose between staying debt-free and passing up opportunities or chasing opportunities and kicking ass, I’ll choose the latter. It’s really that simple.
Don’t get me wrong: It’s one thing to invest in a company with debt; it’s another for a CEO / CFO to raise debt.
Also, once you understand financial engineering, you can always restructure your capital structure and clean up your balance sheet according to an investor or buyer’s needs and preferences. But until either one of those things happen, you can’t be bothered.
Yes: debt is the devil’s currency, but selling equity is the fool’s currency of choice, if you ask me, especially with content companies, which most investors don’t get and aren’t comfortable with to begin with. If the founder of a tech company goes bonkers, starts doing lines of coke off a hooker’s ass, the investor can bring in a techie to run the ship. But if the founder of a content company goes yaya and starts doing jello shots with a stripper… who comes in to scream “action”? As you can see, it’s a different ball game…
But like anything else, you can turn a negative into a positive: debt helps you avoid the friction you are bound to have with outside investors. Don’t get me wrong, debt is uber dangerous as debtholders stand ahead of stockholders and don’t care about much other than getting repaid, and on time, but because the interest paid on debt is tax-deductible and you don’t dilute your holdings (if structured right), then debt is less painful and less of a waste of time than selling equity.
In some 30 months of managing WatchMojo.com, I will go on record to say that investor roadshows is the #1 biggest waste of time and money. I’ll gladly take half the blame for such waste of time… but trust me, do yourself a favor and don’t bother with would-be investors. When they bend over backwards to meet you, let alone invest in your company, consider returning their call… why?
Truth is few people can raise debt, and VCs play this card quite well to their advantage. More power to them, frankly! A sucker is born every day and usually, in the VC/Entrepreneur/Banker ecosystem, the sucker is the CEO for playing along the sham that is fundraising.
Anyway, with that off my chest, for whatever reason, I’m sharing some stats.
From 2006 to 2007 , as a debt-free company with no outside funding:
- our revenues grew 154%
- our costs grew 78%
While losses accounted for 213% of revenues in 2006, the next year; in 2007, they only accounted for 149% - yes, small consolation, I know.
Thankfully, in Canada, we get back a decent portion of R&D in tax credits… as a content producer, our R&D costs are lower than a pure tech firm… but let’s face it, most tech firms have $0 revenues early on, whereas a smart media firm always has revenues (how come? I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you). Since we still invest a good portion in technology and development, so we will get back some costs…
Which takes us to the moral of the day: it’s not enough to be a good marketer or a good techie, you do need to have a good sense of accounting principles and financial know-how. When I think of all of the money that has gone into WatchMojo.com, for what it’s worth, a part of it has come from re-invested proceeds (tax refunds, credits, etc).
As my father would say: if you’re going to owe the bank money, don’t owe them $1,000… owe the $1,000,000… then and only then will they care about anything else than being repaid, and repaid on time.
But that’s another post for another day.
During the Great Depression, farmers would destroy crops in order to create some kind of floor price for their fruits and vegetables, even though many of their fellow citizens were starving to death. John Steinbeck chronicles this plight in Grapes of Wrath, a book I will pretend to have read (I actually read some of it, but man that book was thick).
Today, despite homelessness being as rampant as ever, some are considering actually demolishing homes in order to create some kind of defense against sliding home prices. As foreclosures skyrocket and empty houses proliferate the marketplace, the specter of unsold, empty homes keeps a lid on recovering real estate prices (in a best case scenario) and accelerates plummeting home values in a worst case scenario. Indeed, according to a recent piece in The Economist:
Of the 129m housing units in America, 18.6m stand empty. At 2.9%, the home-owner vacancy rate, which measures the share of vacant homes for sale, has reached its highest point since measurement began in 1956. At the end of the first quarter there were 2.3m empty homes on the market, an increase of more than 160,000 from the end of 2007.
As horrific as the prospect might be, construction cranes might very well be replaced by bulldozers in a neighborhood near you. While sociologists cringe at the mere thought thereof, economists would be quick to argue the merits of such a strategy when there is endless supply on one side but weak - or non-existent - demand on the other.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that of YouTube’s vast inventory of content, only 4% was monetizable. The remaining 96% consisted either of pirated videos or user-generated content (or crap, as I like to call it). The net effect of this, on a site which generates 70% of the streams online and commands 35% market share of eyeballs, was simple: YouTube cannot really exert any pricing power… especially in a battleground such as display, which gets by even less on mathematical logic and economic determinism and more so on gut feeling and perception.
Allow me to add a quick disclaimer: our company, WatchMojo.com, provides professional content (to which we own the rights) to YouTube, amongst a myriad of other players.
So connecting all of these variables, I wondered, would Google ever consider going nuclear and simply scrub YouTube of all of the crap found on the site? Sure, traffic would take a beating… but if one thing is clear, it’s that online, and with online video in particular, traffic does not (at least not presently) equal revenues.
“There will be new monetization forms. That is what we are seeking. That is the holy grail,” Eric Schmidt said on a conference call after Google reported disappointing second-quarter earnings. “When we find it, it (monetization) is likely to be very large because of the scope and scale of YouTube.”
The idea sounds crazy, but if YouTube gets rid of 96% of the seedier and undesirable content on the site, no doubt you very well might see a proportionate loss of streams, maybe not a drop of 96%, but probably something in the 50-85%.
But what about users? I don’t think YouTube would lose 96%, 69% or even 50% of its users in the short-term.
Initially, people would find something to watch on YouTube… and in fact, they would suddenly find something of higher quality to watch, something that YouTube owns the rights to, in fact.
As such, if YouTube loses even 75% of its streams, it would be left with a leadership position in streams, and it would still remain in a leadership position in terms of eyeballs and market share.
Most importantly, if the site were devoid of the crap that scares away traditional content owners - let alone marketers - many more companies would partner with Google (hint: Viacom) and give YouTube more monetizable content that would in turn open the floodgates with marketers.
But, of course, here’s the problem:
Google might as well launch a new site, called YouTube Prime (or YouTube Light) because what made YouTube YouTube is the UGC, or as I call it, the crap. As a content owner with nearly 2,000 high quality clips on YouTube, I want to see nothing else but Google and YouTube printing money… but when I think of what your typical marketer looks for… I have to say… I’m just not sure if YouTube is the holy grail, it’s an important part of the ecosystem, no doubt… but the holy grail? Je ne sais pas.
In case you are wondering: no, I don’t actually think Google will press the red button and flush YouTube clean, but then again, with mounting bandwidth and legal costs, and no real revenue to match YouTube’s awesome stream count… you have to wonder: what is more likely,
- a publicly traded company burning UGC videos in order to maintain its profit margins and make Wall Street happy,
or
- a government approving the burning of food crops and the destruction of homes which affects the many, in order to protect the investment of a few.
Yeah, welcome to crazy times people… I’m heading for the bunker.
Deep, random thoughts from the front lines.
So I already commented on what went on through my mind where I signed a contract where the Applicable Law was Israel, read more here.
Today I signed a contract with a French-based organization… (no, sadly, we’re not selling to Pernod Ricard) and read:
PLAY
