Another Douglas 10 to Watch winner (2012) has reached a major milestone in its business growth. A recent US Comscore All Devices Viewership report saw Victoria-based SendtoNews reach record highs in videos viewed, surpassing the one billion mark.
SendtoNews publishers delivered content to over 47,444,000 unique viewers, totaling 1,041,295,000 video views across the United States for May 2020. This puts them at number 13 and 21 in video views and unique viewers, respectively, while they remain number one in the sports category for desktop viewership in both metrics.
SendtoNews owns and operates the leading digital video distribution platform in North America, supplying more than 1800 digital publishers with revenue, premium content and advanced video player technology.
A media release from the organization says it saw a 120 percent growth in video viewership from May 2019.
Douglas asked CEO Matthew Watson to share his thoughts on this achievement and SendtoNews’ future.
What does the ‘one billion views’ milestone mean for you?
“Our goal has always been to help publishers thrive in the digital environment by providing engaging and revenue-generating digital video content. The viewership numbers, while nice, are a reflection and validation of our success in achieving our goal of helping publishers rather than a target themselves. The fact that over 1,800 publishers trust us to deliver more than 1 billion views across over 45 million unique viewers in the US every month shows that we are consistent in our mission.”
What would you like to have achieved by 2025?
“By 2025, SendtoNews will be helping more publishers — we will be far and away the leading and most widely used online video platform for publishers in the world. We aim to be publishers’ end-to-end video solution by providing a complete platform of digital video content, technology and monetization. Publishers using SendtoNews can leverage our content library of over 5,000 daily videos from providers like MLB, AP, Rolling Stone, Condé Nast, Bloomberg, NFL and 100+ others, as well use our industry leading video player technology to deliver their own content to their readership. This is all complemented with turnkey monetization, ensuring every publisher gets revenue with every video play.
Our turnkey online video platform is intuitive, reliable and has been a vital tool of our partners’ success. We aim to deliver our platform to all publishers looking to enhance their user experience and revenue with video.”
When you look back at where you started and where you are now, how assertive has your growth been, and what has propelled it?
“Our growth has been incredibly assertive. Last year we placed 4th on the Canadian Business Growth 500, having grown by nearly 14,000% in the past 5 years.
The driver of our success has been our partner-first approach to business. Rather than charge a fee or subscription, we use a revenue share model with our partners to provide our platform at zero-cost. This means we are as invested in our partners success as they are, and we want to give them every tool they need to thrive. This has led us to be trusted by leading names in publishing like the New York Post, Chicago Tribune, SF Gate, Baltimore Sun, National Post and others to provide an industry leading digital video content, technology and monetization platform that helps in their goals.
We have also established this trust with our content providers — they know that their videos will be seen by engaged, relevant and incremental audiences on our platform. This has shown documented increases in brand visibility for these providers and has made SendtoNews an integral part of their distribution strategy.”
Any challenges that you are proud to have overcome?
“Adapting to the new environment created by COVID-19 is a great example of the nimbleness, focus and innovative nature of everyone at SendtoNews.
We reacted quickly to changes in the digital video industry and provided our partners with several solutions to help during their adjustments. These included a player dedicated to COVID-19 coverage that updated every 20 minutes with the latest news and information, helping publishers keep their readers up to date.
We also launched “Reliving Sports,” which provided publishers the best in historical sports highlights from MLB, NBA, PGA TOUR, NHL, NFL and more. This had the multi-pronged effect of allowing publishers to keep their readers engaged and on page, while giving our content providers an avenue to stay top of mind with sports fans hungry for content while league play was on pause.
Our adaptiveness to changes in the digital video industry and knowledge of the landscape has helped us address challenges head on time and time again.”
Additional Reading:
