Break Decides Its Strength is in Ads, Not Video

Break.com, the video site for men, has decided one part of its strategy is more promising than the other. Over the past two months, the company launched a men’s gossip blog, a mixed martial arts blog, and Chickipedia, “the wiki of hot women.” That’s right, they’re keeping the men part — and deemphasizing the video.

The company (like everyone and their mom, no?) is becoming an ad network, signing sites like Barstool Sports to sell alongside its own properties. Already Break has 35 million international viewers per month across the twelve sites in its network.

“When we thought about how to expand the business it wasn’t about the video world, it’s not ‘hey we can do content deals,’” said Break CEO Keith Richman in an interview last week. “Our goal was never to be YouTube, it was always to be a men’s entertainment destination — our name when we started was ‘Big Boys.’”

Break.com itself will remain a video-focused site, and is the largest single property in the network.

Half of you think it’s totally sad or and half of you think it’s totally awesome that Richman has to pitch sites with names like Chickipedia and Holy Taco, but either way he’s already got relationships with advertisers like Universal Pictures, Axe Vice, Paramount, Verizon, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, HBO, and Disney.

You might recall that earlier this month we wrote about another video site becoming an online ad network: GoFish.

Also, Break was recently in the news for soliciting striking writers.

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