Reality Digital, the former digital asset management company and consulting firm that became an interactive agency building video communities for brands, is now revisiting its software side. The San Francisco-based company is launching today a white-label video publishing and distribution platform called Spotlight.
Reality Digital CEO Cynthia Francis told us in a conversation last week that her customers have been asking for such a self-serve product so they can unite their video businesses between their brand campaigns — what Reality Digital usually works on, for instance the NFL.com Replay Re-Cutter or the YouTube channels for Pepsi and HP — and their longer-term video assets. “The needs are combined, and the products have not been,” she said. “People kept asking for it. We said, ‘Why are we handing these other people money again?'”
Francis contends her product has better features, a stronger focus on socialization around content, and lower and more transparent pricing than competitors such as Brightcove and Ooyala. Reality Digital did have to build an advertising component for Spotlight, something that wasn’t necessary in the past when the content was advertising itself. I can’t comment too much on the relative quality of the product, but Francis’ in-person demo put a lot of emphasis on how easy it is to change the color of a video player — not a feature that would be incredibly important to me.
We see a lot of white-label video offerings, and it’s often the Plan B or Plan C business for a company — so it’s hard not to be skeptical of a new entrant. But Reality Digital does have a strong set of customer relationships from MTV to The Travel Channel to Hyundai. The big test will be whether those customers — who already know Reality Digital well — make the shift over to Spotlight. At launch today, the company got a testimonial out of the executive producer of MacNeil/Lehrer Production’s the.News: “The flexibility and range of functionality the Spotlight platform elevates our efforts to develop new, targeted online communities to a new level.”
Reality Digital has raised $8.8 million in funding from investors including OpenView Venture Partners.
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