Revver Compensates Video Creators and 'Sharers'

Video hosting and sharing service Revver is now out of beta with new features, and I’ve been looking at and playing around with it some, trying to gauge its significance.

Revver is going hard after power video bloggers, and counts celebrities like Ask a Ninja and the Mentos/Diet Coke guys among its uploaders. Its greatest creative assets are these dedicated creators who have committed to the service for reasons of quality and monetization. Whereas YouTube offers no recompense to video uploaders, Revver attaches a still end-frame ad and splits revenues 50/50 with the video creator. Another way people can make money with Revver is by becoming “sharers” and promoting videos already living on Revver’s servers. These affiliates get 20 percent off the top of any ad revenue earned through their site. Revver and the creator split the remaining.

One of the top video creators using Revver right now for hosting is Ze Frank, whose The Show with Ze Frank and other online community efforts have built a large following. (One show from July has been watch 41,000 times; another about 36,000.) I tried to reach out to Frank to gauge his satisfaction with the service, but nothing back yet. Since I imagine most of the views are coming through his own Web site and not through Revver’s, I’m curious to learn whether he’s satisfied with the 55 to 60 percent share of ad revenue he’s likely pulling.

Advertisers so far on Revver have included American Apparel, MSN, Warner Bros. and Universal Studios, a spokesperson told me. Ads are sold in-house.

A big part of the new release is about making Revver more of a destaination in its own right. New features allow Revver users to create Web pages, complete with individual URL, and populate that space with theirs and others’ videos. I’m not sure I think video hosting services should be content destinations. These days, the trend is in syndication and enabling the sharing of video in nooks and crannies all over the Web. Of course, you can’t blame them for trying to have more of a brand and pick up extra ad revenue from that.

The nice thing about Revver 1.0 is the embrace of both approaches, with a financial nod toward the video creators who make the whole thing possible.