Anyone searching for a video influencer and related marketing info now has an additional resource at their disposal as of May 6: Intelligence software company Tubular Labs publically launched its video creator profile database today.
Previously available to enterprise clients, Tubular co-founder and VP of marketing Allison Stern (pictured) said it’s time to spread the word about her California-based company and make the information more accessible.
“We want to make Tubular the gold standard for video measurement in this new, fragmented media universe,” Stern tells StreamDaily.
Tubular Labs, which measures video viewership, currently analyzes the engagement of 290 million viewers and tracks more than one billion videos across 30-plus platforms. A typical Tubular creator profile provides contact and marketing information covering influencers across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Vine. Each influencer is represented by a profile, a synopsis of his or her social reach and monthly video views, as noted with the example of Bethany Mota’s profile below:
“This is a really big deal for us,” says Stern, a former YouTube marketer who co-founded Tubular Labs three years ago with former Machinima exec, Rob Gabel. “It’s the first time we’re releasing any of our insights to the public. We’ve got the largest database of video content in conversation. We’re trying to track every video everywhere, and, to date, that’s only been available to our enterprise clients.”
Sporting a database of 2.5 million video creators that also includes media companies and brands, Stern says Tubular will still retain proprietary information for such enterprise clients as Pepsi, Activision, Warner Bros. and HGTV that can only be accessed for a fee. For instance, demographics of a channel (males, females, age, geography) or if you want to search by filters (i.e. top 10 gaming channels are in Brazil) will only be available to paying enterprise customers.
The free content will, however, allow anyone to search for any video creator in the world.
“If you know the name of an influencer – PewDePie, Bethany Mota, or a media company like Conde Nast, you can search for it and get a channel profile of that channel, how many views it has, what its growth rate is, sample types of content that it creates and its levels of engagement,” Stern said.
Tubular will incorporate any contact information the influencer provides on his or her channel, but Stern said the company will not act as brokers.
Stern said the timing for Tubular couldn’t be better, with custom media research firm PQ Media pegging the value of global branded entertainment revenue at $73.27 billion for 2014.
“Online video is democratic – anybody can become a creator,” says Stern, whose company generates the creator profiles manually, but pulled some of the information from other sources.
“When we started the company three years ago, I saw a very clear need for data transparency. It seemed like an opportunity for someone in the space to come in and exploit it. Rob was at Machinima, and we met up and had this shared vision of ‘Can we create pro tools for marketers on YouTube?’
“At the time, it was really YouTube based: 80% of video views were on YouTube, [which] was synonymous with online video. One of the interesting trends over the last few years, especially in the last six months, has been the rise of Facebook video, the rise of Vine, the rise of Instagram video, the rise of Snapchat and Vice – all exciting new video properties and video content.”
To date, Tubular Lab creator profiles are used in different ways by different organizations. For example, E.L.F. cosmetics identified users in sync with their brand and sent them free product to use on screen. In 90 days, more than 11,000 E.L.F. cosmetics videos were uploaded by fans and influencers, generating more than 27 million views for the brand, earning (at $0.10 per view) $2.7 million worth of earned media value, according to Tubular.
Tubular Labs is financed by venture capital firms FirstMark Capital, Canaan Partners, SVAngel, Lerer Hippeau Ventures and others.