14 DAY TRIAL // Online video startup Blip.tv has announced new partnerships with several video sites, which should substantially increase its viewership. The biggest partner is YouTube, which will now allow the startup to serve its own ads in the videos, but also important are the deals with Vimeo and NBC. Apart from the new distribution partnerships, the site also announced a new Show Creator Dashboard and new technologies from FreeWheel and TubeMogul.
“Our mission is to make independent Web shows sustainable. We’re building a next-generation television network in order to accomplish our mission. Today’s announcement revealed a series of steps that we’re taking to accomplish these twin goals,” Mike Hudack, Blip.tv founder, president and CEO, wrote. “[W]e put economies of scale to work for independent producers. We provide services like technology and bandwidth, workflow automation, distribution and business development. We provide services like advertising sales. We do all of this in exchange for a revenue share. We’ve embraced a radical new model.”
Blip.tv is not just a video-hosting provider, it aims to give independent artists the tools necessary to distribute and make money from their content allowing niche products to make it to the public bypassing regular networks. About 50,000 shows have made their way to Blip.tv and the company distributes them across several video sites, iTunes and several set-top box devices.
The new partnership deals, though, are much bigger than anything the company has managed until now, with Hudack expecting to double the traffic to the site. The biggest deal is, of course, with YouTube, which was made possible just today, after the company had decided to allow partners to push their own advertising using third-party ad networks. FreeWheel, the company that YouTube partnered with for the new ad options, will be providing the ads for Blip.tv too. FreeWheel will be taking care of the ad revenue coming from all the different platforms while Blip.tv is left to manage the actual delivery of the videos. The video site does a 50/50 split of the revenue with the creators of the shows after paying the other parties involved.
Along with the new YouTube deal also comes a distribution deal with Vimeo, an up-and-coming online video provider with a focus on higher quality content. A new deal with NBC was struck to allow the distribution of Blip.tv content in the New York area as well as expanding the existing deals with Verizon, Tivo and others.