IAC’s Vimeo Seeks More Video Revenue With New Marketing Product

Vimeo, IAC/InterActiveCorp’s online video sharing business, for the first time is selling companies a way to organize the creation and marketing of videos used for advertising and brand promotions.

The new product, Vimeo Business, helps companies better manage, upload and distribute their videos as well as run more effective marketing and outreach campaigns, Vimeo said Tuesday in a statement. The New York-based online video marketplace also is trying to differentiate itself from competitors by offering clients access to content creators who use Vimeo to manage and upload their videos. The company will help match the filmmakers to Business clients looking to hire for projects, said Anjali Sud, general manager of Vimeo’s creator platform.

Fostering these connections is “super beneficial to creators, helping them to find work, and super beneficial to businesses seeking to do more video marketing,” she said. “We heard from the filmmaker community that they’re looking for easier ways to work with and find clients.” Even before releasing Vimeo Business, the company has already seen significant growth in brands and enterprises becoming paying members, seeking tools to help them build their video marketing operations, she said.

Vimeo’s move to providing an enterprise-focused product comes as internet giants including Facebook Inc. are investing heavily in video and companies from startups to large traditional retailers are spending more on the medium to attract customers. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg predicted in July “a world that is video first, with video at the heart of all of our apps and services.” Last year, for the first time, people spent more time watching videos than any other online activity, according to Forrester Research.

IAC counts Vimeo as one of its big bets following the spinoff of Match Group Inc., a business CEO Joey Levin said has the potential to be bigger than the parent company. So far, Vimeo, which doesn’t use advertising and has traditionally not focused on consumer viewers, has yet to live up to the promise. Levin pointed out this year that IAC’s video operations, primarily Vimeo, haven’t been growing fast enough to match the explosion in the broader industry. Vimeo’s previous CEO Kerry Trainor left earlier this year after building the on-demand video service as a new revenue stream for the company.

Although filmmakers have praised Vimeo for the quality of its software and video player, its audience and revenue lags behind YouTube, a division of Alphabet Inc.’s Google. YouTube makes its money from advertising, while Vimeo’s sales come from its subscriptions for creators and on-demand video service. Even with a smaller number of viewers, Sud said she’s confident business customers will pick Vimeo over YouTube. Vimeo’s clean interface and commitment to an ad-less experience on its website, combined with more customization features and integrations with marketing tools such as the e-mail campaign manager MailChimp, distinguishes the service from its competitor.

“We’re also offering VIP support, so that you can get responses in an hour — a service YouTube doesn’t offer,” Sud said.

Vimeo Business provides data on viewership and can tell when users stop watching videos. It integrated the analytics tools with the Google Analytics dashboard, a feature the company built because its current customers use it, Sud said. The product also allows businesses to add in forms for viewers to fill in their e-mail and will pull the data directly into e-mail campaigns. The new plan costs $599 a year and gives 10 users access to the account to facilitate collaboration, similar to the setup of other software-as-a-service products geared toward enterprises.

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