Video Ad News: Why Dailymotion is Pivoting Away from UGC
Last year Dailymotion relaunched its platform with a revamped mobile app and a new focus on content made by premium publishers. The move represented a pivot away from user-generated content (UGC), and came at a time when YouTube was beleaguered by brand safety issues stemming from struggles to moderate content on its own platform. But while Dailymotion is placing its focus on premium content, it hasn’t lost faith in UGC entirely says Claudia Page, Dailymotion’s VP of Partner Products, who believes that user content can still form the foundation of a viable video platform.
The relaunch of Dailymotion is in part is a strategic move by Vivendi, which bought an 80 percent stake in the company in 2015 with a view to moulding the platform into becoming part of its distribution network. Page explained that Vivendi wants to create an ecosystem out of its various properties to more efficiently distribute and monetise across the network.
Page used the Paddington movie franchise as an example: “As distribution channels go, you have Universal Music Group and their partnerships to distribute the soundtrack, you have our SVOD (subscription video on demand) services like myCANAL where you could watch a potential series that’s developed in the future, and you have Dailymotion to get exclusive access to the trailer before the movie comes out,” she explained.
But Vivendi also sees demand in the market from other publishers for a platform specifically geared towards distribution and surfacing of their own premium content. The company sees an opportunity to pitch itself as the new home of premium publisher content.
Page says there’s been a cyclical trend of publishers becoming too reliant on third party platforms. “We see that there’s been the rise of properties that send publishers tonnes and tonnes of traffic, which publishers have then become reliant on. Then we’re also seeing publishers trying to create their own walled gardens, and trying to own and monetise their own audiences indepedently.”
Dailymotion wants to be a trusted partners for premium publishers and Page says that Dailymotion’s design fits with what publishers are asking for. While Dailymotion.com is aimed at connecting publishers with audiences, she says the player itself is designed to work agnostically of the Dailymotion platform, and claims that it gives publishers more insights and ownership of their audiences thanks to its ad tech stack.
As well as demand from publishers, the redesign is of course partly a response to advertiser demands too, as brand safety scares have shifted some away from UGC and towards more reliable, premium content from established publishers.