Exclusive Interview With Saurabh Bhatia, Co-Founder, Vdopia – On The Utilisation Of Their Series-A Funding
We recently spoke to Vdopia’s co-founder and Chief Business Officer, Saurabh Bhatia in an exclusive interview concerning the recent $4 Million Series-A Funding raised from Nexus Venture Partners. It seems the funding has come to them at the right time when many online streaming sites are finding it tough to monetize video content hence specialized video ad networks like Vdopia are enjoying success. Saurabh shared with us Vdopia’s strategies in how they’ll use the funding for the future of their organisation. Lets take a look at some of the crucial facts and figures that he shared with us. Some excerpts of the interview -
1) What will the funding be used for?
The funding that we have raised will be essentially used in four key areas.
- Expansion of our operations in India which is a very critical market for us.
- We recognize mobile to be the next big thing and we continue our commitment in that space. For that we have launched probably the world’s first video network for iphone this year. We would expand that product offering in the US market as well.
- We would be using the proceeds in R&D. We intend to maintain our leadership provision by offering new and innovative video monetization solutions.
- We have been pioneers in doing that with offerings like dynamic skin branding, live streaming ad insertion both for which our propitiatory technologies and we have filed patents for. So more such technologies are in offering for which the funding will be used.
2) You have started powering live cricket streaming – What is the strategy behind that?
The key strategy behind that is Vdopia truly believes that live streaming ad insertion is the next big thing in the online as well as mobile media space. We believe that in the next decade online and mobile put together will become the new mass media just like TV and Print are today. These two streams will become the mass media and over there we believe that the premium content will have an edge. I mean, people want to consume premium content wherever it is. More and more audience from traditional media spends time finding content on the internet. Vdopia’s live streaming Ad insertion technology is a step towards harnessing the monetization power of that content for example in the recently concluded Compaq Cup which India won and Sachin Tendulkar scored a century in the finals we did live streaming insertion and the results were truly amazing, both in terms of the advertiser’s response and in terms of audience response. We have received a huge encouragement from that. So Vdopia’s key strategy is not only restrict ourselves to cricket but go across all the TV channels and make sure that entire content is available on TV that should be available on the internet and in live streaming the way it is shown on television.
3) What is the total video inventory that you currently hold?
100 Million streams.
4) What is the monetization metric and rates for video ads? Is it pay per view? and how much is the average revenue per view?
The monetization metric that Vdopia follows is essentially a pay per view metric. The rates vary from $10 to $40 depending on the content. However, with the introduction of live streaming we are introducing the pay per spot model which is the similar model that is present in the TV market.
5) How big is your team?
Currently we are a 17 member team at Vdopia and in the next few months we intend to double the team.
6) How much percentage of total digital advertising is online video advertising currently?
As per an E&Y report, online video advertising is currently at 60 crores which is roughly 10% of the total online advertising market. However the same report also claims that this is 300% growth annually.
7) Who are your main competitors?
Our main competitors are essentially the niche TV channels and online companies targeting the online branded advertising from the media budget that has been allocated. May be the Ad networks as well, but the first two are major competitors.
8 ) How are you better than your competitors?
In terms of Vdopia the unique offering that we have are -
It is a robust technology platform and the proprietary ad units that we make available to our publishers enables them to increase their yeild per video. For example our dynamic skin branding is an ad unit by which Vdopia partner publishers are able to increase their yield by as high as 70%. We are the only company in the country that has live streaming ad insertion technology which is a huge edge. In addition, to our advertisers we offer them huge video content network so that they can actually target and reach out to the relevant audience as compared to the TV channels we offer 100% transparency and 100% measurability and accountability which is not available on TV. We also offer an opportunity for the brand advertisers to reach out their audience associated with the content even if they are present online. One more matrix that we must take note of is that industry average for video utilisation is 15-25% but Vdopia is able
to offer to its publishers 75-95% inventory utilisation which is why we are normally the no. 1 but in way we capture the 50% of market share.
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