While Google’s (GOOG) YouTube continues to gain market share and increase its lead in the Web video market, funding to its competitors continues to flow
unabated. Yesterday, Dailymotion raised $34 million, following on the heels of Veoh ($26 million) and MetaCafe ($30 million.)
These three companies alone have raised a total of $125 million — a stupendous amount of money considering that they don’t even figure among the top ten video destination sites.
The future for these companies is unclear, but that level of investment indicates that they may have no option but to become standalone businesses. In the meantime, the number of likely buyers is slowly decreasing. For now, NBC and Fox, who are backing Hulu ( $100 million), don’t seem to care too much, and Yahoo (YHOO) has its hands full.
Microsoft (MSFT) isn’t going to be interested because all three of the video sites use rival Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash technology. A European media or telecom company could be a buyer, but I can’t think of any right now.
The lure of video advertising (something even YouTube is trying to figure out) is too strong for investors to resist. I think online video advertising is a bit of a chimera. The big challenge for all online video destinations is the ever-present threat of lawsuits for infringing content. Every lawsuit drains resources (and cash reserves), as Veoh is about to found out. Regardless, the battle for the tenth spot should be an interesting one. Time to pop the popcorn.
6 comments so far
8:39 AM PT
Goldrush 2.0, personally I’d sell my sieve, click on some Videohybrid, aka ‘the summer project’, ah sweet irony, and settle down for some Bourne Penultimatum and the rumour that Om is going to be the next Bond villain.
Dirk Musk
10:48 AM PT
Gigavideo has to be worth $5m pre-money
10:59 AM PT
Acquisitions come from surprising places and it’s just a matter of time until this innovative sector solves the problem of advertising to audiences that are today only a fraction of what they will be in time. NewTeeVee says these sites get 10% of YouTube’s traffic right? They are building substantial audiences while the major tech bloggers are sitting on the sidelines and shaking their heads cynically ;) I think some more optimism is warranted.
11:04 AM PT
[...] post info By epigonic Categories: Uncategorized The $34M funding of Daily Motion yesterday, on top of other monster rounds by Veoh and Metacafe, has people talking about the video sharing space again. Om Malik has an interesting wrap up here. [...]
11:25 AM PT
When the mad money starts flowing, it’s time to get out of that space. Online video itself is now old news.
The question is - what’s the next big thing in online video - that’s what will make the VCs money. However, most VCs are also loath to invest in such companies.
3:53 AM PT
They are going to earn things big.
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