SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The protection of media content being shared by consumers through socially led verticals, has become a key issue for media right owners. Grabyo a London start-up believes that it has found the key to not only protecting content but also monetising video sharing clips on social platforms for media owners.
Grabyo enables broadcasters and content rights holders to create, share and monetise real time video and live TV clips on any social platform. Grabyo is optimised for mobile and supports integrated advertising and sponsorship campaigns across Twitter and Facebook – including Twitter Amplify. Grabyo is a certified Twitter Amplify partner.
Team SBC caught up with CEO Gareth Capon, to discuss Grabyo’s services, its sports content ambitions and how consumer media content consumption is evolving. Prior to joining Grabyo, Gareth Capon led mobile and social product development for BSkyB.
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SBC: Hi Gareth, great to interview you. Can you summarise for SBC readers Grabyo’s real-time video sharing product and services. How do you visualise Grabyo’s product effecting commercial and media engagement with social media consumers?
Gareth: Certainly. Grabyo’s video platform allows broadcasters and content rights holders to instantly create clips from any live video feed and distribute them across websites, social channels and social mobile apps in real time. As a short-form video format that meets the instantaneous nature of social media and is optimised for viewing on mobile devices, real-time video is highly appealing to social media users. We see huge and immediate spikes in traffic as premium sports content is shared on social media – and not just the obvious clips such as goals but from all kinds of irreverent clips too.
Our platform also integrates sponsorship and advertising assets into the clips so that media owners are able to new revenue from brands. Indeed this is a highly compelling ad format for brands as it enables them to connect their TV activity to social and engage consumers at scale alongside premium content.
SBC: You are currently dealing with numerous media owners, in order to share their content throughout numerous social networks. Content rights and content distribution has been a delicate issue for media owners. How has your team approached development of this key facet of your business?
Gareth: Our focus has been on providing a very fast and powerful mechanism for media owners to create and distribute video clips, so media owners can ensure they’re the first to share the clips and that it’s their clips that go viral – rather than user-generated clips. As such, media owners recognise that we are addressing the issue of piracy as well as opening up a new revenue stream for them from existing content.
SBC: How do you feel that consumer intake of media and content has changed or been impacted on due to socially led technologies. What type of consumer are we now dealing with, and how do you get them to engage with a product or service?
Gareth: Social media is now an integral part of many people’s lives. 864m people access Facebook via a mobile device, every day. In fact, the majority of our digital media consumption is now taking place in mobile apps and social apps like Facebook and Twitter are among the most popular. So in order to engage consumers you need to be thinking social and mobile. Furthermore, video is the most effective way of engaging them. So you need to be thinking mobile, video and social – indeed, these are the three most important growth areas of the global advertising industry and Grabyo sits across all three.
SBC: We have seen numerous technologies fail to engage socially led audiences. As a start-up how did you research social trends and user habits in order to ensure that your product would be engaging and innovative to social consumers?
Gareth: TV is a huge driver of engagement; both in the real world as well as virtually, on popular social media platforms. This is true with sport as well as other TV formats such as news and reality TV. While others had attempted to engage consumers around TV on third party apps, we recognised that it needed to be done on the dominant social platforms.
(Grabyo Product Feature)
SBC: For start-ups that are targeting social users/audiences, should they let their product design and development be driven by social consumer habits, or should their products look to control a users engagement?
Gareth: You absolutely need to look at the underlying consumer trends. History has shown that it is pretty much impossible to control consumer behaviour in a digital world. All you can do is make it as easy as possible for consumers to engage with your products and services, while figuring out a way to make money out of it.
SBC: You have raised capital from well known sporting figures (Thierry Henry, Tony Parker, Robin Van Persie & Cesc Fabregas), why is sports content important to Grabyo’s content strategy?
Gareth: Individual stars have enormous and highly engaged followings on social media and these audiences continue to grow – footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has expanded his social audience by 20 million in less than six months. With the stars now emerging as very significant media properties in their own right, we believe they will become an increasingly important channel for media distribution. By bringing on board some of the most respected names in sport globally, we’ll be in a much better position to capitalise on this rapidly growing media channel.
SBC: Looking ahead to 2015, how do you see your product developing in the coming months?
Gareth: As well as making ongoing improvements to our core platform, we’re also looking very closely at this talent piece and are very excited about our product pipeline so watch this space!
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Gareth Capon – CEO Grabyo
