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Meet the Startups

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Welcome to the sixth edition of Startup Outlook, 360i’s guide for how brands can evaluate emerging technologies and platforms. This month’s spotlight is on video – when brands harness video well, there are few better ways to engage consumers. This report explores three ways people are sharing videos from their mobile devices and takes a look at two technologies that allow marketers to create, capture and promote videos. Marketers who want to look beyond YouTube and pre-roll ads should get familiar with the five entrants here: Broadcast for Friends, SundaySky, Tout, Viddy and VideoGenie.

If you have feedback, or if you represent a startup and want to be considered for a future edition, contact us at startup@360i.com.

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Issue 6 – October 2012

Here is 360i’s qualitative Startup Scorecard, presentingthe four criteria to use when evaluating startups:StartupScorecard

Value: What consumer and brand needs does the technology facilitate? If a consumer application, why would consumers use this, and why would brandseven consider participating? If the value is high for consumers, brands will want to find a way to get involved.

Applicability: Which brands or verticals would findthe startup most relevant? Even the hottest startupsaren’t right for every brand. Some startups are more applicable for a certain season, campaign or goal.

Prominence: How can the brand stand out and create its own experience? A rotating banner ad within a site or application won’t give the brand a prominent hook, while sponsorships, white label offerings and product integration will score high here.

Ingenuity: What is exciting right now? In some cases,a brand will seek out ingenuity because it’s looking to attract media attention and get recognized as an innovator. It’s also important to discern whether the offering is truly unique, or if there are more established competitors with similar offerings that can better achieve a marketer’s goals.

Each Startup Outlook report measures five select companies against the evaluation criteria outlined in 360i’s Startup Scorecard. To suggest a startup for inclusion in future updates, contact us at startup@360i.com.

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Broadcast for Friends by Ustream www.broadcastforfriends.com

• Value: Ustream, launched in 2007, may not be a startup, but its new Broadcast For Friends (BFF) offering is an exciting emerging technology product launched by one of the better known providers of live streaming offerings. People can use BFF to stream live video directly to their Facebook page, embedded within a post. Users can add filters that instantly appear for viewers and comments appear in real time, with hardly any delay. Brands can have Facebook page moderators share live video streams directly to their feeds.

• Applicability: For brands looking to find new ways to connect with their Facebook audiences, this is one more tool to consider. This would work best for live events, or for brands featuring celebrities or other talent.

• Prominence: Videos are viewed via Facebook’s News Feed, rather than the Ustream app or site. Most of the time, marketers and page owners using BFF will do so at a planned time, rather than spontaneously, so they should consider building up demand for the live stream by creating a Facebook event, sending email alerts and running paid media.

• Ingenuity: Before BFF, Ustream launched an app to stream live video to a Ustream channel, and com-petitors also offer live streaming apps. The twist with BFF is that marketers can deliver video directly to where people spend the most time online – Facebook. BFF is simple, convenient, and brings the conver-sation happening on Facebook right back into the app to create opportunities for two-way engagement.

BFF allows users to add filters to video, stream the video live directly on their Facebook page and view comments in real time.

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SundaySky www.sundaysky.com

• Value: SundaySky takes any kind of data feed and turns it into a series of customized videos. This provides unique opportunities to add video to the mix, which include using an email database to create customized videos based on prospects’ preferences, generating a feed of products viewed on a retailer’s site to then create thousands of customized videos used in retargeting ads, or using a customer’s account history to create a personalized walkthrough of how to understand their bill (with upselling opportunities embedded throughout). These are all actual examples of how marketers have used SundaySky, with the potential to display the video anywhere, including on-site, email, mobile, social, or in pre-roll ads.

• Applicability: Given its wide range of use cases, most marketers could probably find an application for SundaySky. What’s interesting is that in any of the scenarios above, marketers didn’t necessarily need to use video and may not have been considering it initially; it just happened to be an effective form of content delivery and SundaySky made it efficient to serve the content in multimedia format.

• Prominence: Brands are able to craft their own experiences with SundaySky, so each engagement will be customized very specifically to the marketer’s needs.

• Ingenuity: Marketers are just starting to appreciate the value of “Big Data,” and SundaySky is far more interesting for what it does with marketers’ data than the videos it produces. There are other companies trying to address similar needs, such as EyeView, which takes video assets and personalizes them based on user and advertiser data. SundaySky stands out because it can be used to create video using a range of creative assets, even when video hasn’t been part of the mix already.

AOL Autos uses SundaySky to input their preferences and demo data to create a customized video.

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Tout www.tout.com

• Value: Tout is a video sharing app that is focused on conversation. People or brands upload brief videos and other users are encouraged to respond via video. It’s perhaps the closest service to a video-based Twitter. Updates can be shared to Twitter, Facebook, or via a website widget. Viewers can participate and respond through mobile apps on iOS and Android, or via their PC’s webcam.

• Applicability: Tout will be especially appealing for entertainment marketers. WWE, Live with Kelly and Michael and EA Sports Madden are among the most popular users.

• Prominence: Brands can sign up as a user and Tout will feature select users within its mobile app. Brands can also create a widget for their site that showcases video updates and viewers’ responses.

• Ingenuity: Compared to services like Viddy (the next featured startup), Tout is much more focused on video conversation where entire threads take place via video. That can make it harder to skim and scan a content thread, but it can be more engaging for the most passionate fans.

With Tout, users can upload videos to their social networks and engage directly with people they follow.

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Viddy www.viddy.com

• Value: Viddy is a content sharing application often described as ‘Instagram for video.’ Often these comparisons do a disservice to both parties, but in this case, it’s accurate, as Viddy does seem to function exactly as Instagram would if it included video uploads along with photos. Viddy lets people upload brief videos, touch them up with filters and a soundtrack and share them across Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube. Brands in turn can create profiles and run contests, generally using hashtags – exactly as marketers do with Instagram.

• Applicability: Brands as diverse as Elle, GE, Southwest Airlines and “Project Runway” are actively using Viddy. Any marketer investing in sharing videos and soliciting user-generated content can consider Viddy as one option, especially for reaching people via mobile devices.

• Prominence: Brands generally must build their own audience, encouraging their fans and others to follow them on Viddy. .

• Ingenuity: Viddy is in a very competitive space, as it must go head to head with the other companies profiled here, as well as YouTube. Yet it has done well generally by following Instagram’s approach—meeting a consumer need with an intuitive and fun product. It doesn’t hurt that celebrities like Snoop Dogg actively participate. Viddy and its investors will now need to see if it can mirror Instagram’s growth.

Viddy allows users to upload brief videos, add filters and a soundtrack and share them across social networks.

VideoGenie www.videogenie.com

• Value: At its core, VideoGenie offers a technology product that allows brands to solicit video feedback and content from consumers from multiple sources (websites, Facebook pages, mobile apps, display ads), moderate responses, and distribute the videos via owned, earned, and paid media. Brands can run contests to generate videos, or curate consumer responses about a topical theme with the brand playing the role of the producer rather than the star.

• Applicability: Many brands can benefit from customer testimonials and brands in all verticals are coming up with creative ways to produce and share video. This can be especially useful when brands are launching new products.

• Prominence: VideoGenie is entirely a B2B offering for brands rather than a destination for reviews and testimonials. One of the most notable features of VideoGenie is how well both the recording and distribution of consumers’ videos can integrate with a brand’s ads, website, social channels and mobile presence.

• Ingenuity: Video testimonials are hardly new; Amazon has incorporated them for years. Most brands can do far more with them, as people will inherently trust their peers and fellow consumers more than the brand’s website or ads. VideoGenie has done well at looking at the various ways brands digitally interact with consumers and adapting their offering accordingly.

360i.com/insights twitter.com/360i editor@360i.com

© 2012 360i LLC. All Rights Reserved

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To read past reports, visit www.startupoutlook.com.

With VideoGenie, brands can solicit video feedback and content from consumers, who can record their videos in multiple ways through multiple platforms.