Ran Harnevo on AOL's 5min Acquisition

With last month's acquisition of online video syndicator 5min by AOL, partners of 5min, like the giant video sharing site Dailymotion, will publish a range of AOL owned and operated video content. For content creators like NextNewNetworks, their presence on 5MIN will expand to many new sites, including the AOL sites. These are some of the facets of AOL's emerging video strategy around video syndication as explained by 5min founder Ran Harnevo in this interview with Beet.TV Andy Plesser.

Ran Harnevo on AOL's 5min Acquisition Ran Harnevo: I think that what the new AOL is trying to build has a really great fit with what we’re trying to build. And for us it was a very natural acquisition to be honest because we share the same vision. And I think AOL is going to help content producers on video and text and wherever they are. And for us, the acquisition was basically to take our vision to the next step and the next level of growth. And help content producers to first be on every AOL owner site which is would probably be our first big project to basically ingest videos on AOL sites that need the content, that we come with and the content producers that we come with. The first natural fee with the old in each site, the food, the home, the gardening, the health, fashion women which is also a Vertical AOL is focused in. You know the natural places where 5min is already their COM Square number one in the US. I think that would be the first step and then we would build more libraries to accommodate more sites if it’s ecology oriented libraries, if it’s celebrity gossip and some entertainment that we’re thinking to get into. But I think that if you look at the AOL only known sites and 5min’s library there’s a really nice feed there and I would just need to create the video recommendation and the video discovery for our library within AOL and all sites. But you know the acquisition was not about getting more video streams only on AOL. Only now’s, I mean I think that the vision of AOL fits right in the sense that they want us to indicate. They want to help other publishers on the web to really create and have more and more content solutions. And we’re going to keep 5min the way it is right now. I mean we’re going to push the gas. We’re going to have more syndication, and we’re going to have more publishers. We’re going to get self served very soon which will help much more mid tail and long tail publishers to ingest with using to their sites. We’re going to have more content because we have AOL’s only now content but that the main premise which is helping content producers to syndicate their content across the web, helping publishers to get video strategies is we’re sticking with it. We’re just pushing the gas and getting less point. Host: You know just to clarify, so you're going to syndicate to AOL properties but also other publishers? Ran Haverno: Sure, sure, sure. We’re keeping with what we’re doing and I think that you know the vision of AOL is not really only on the only now sites. So 5min is going to keep on pushing the best content, the best video content on the web to every publishing site that is interested in doing it. For example, we published to Daily Motion deal that we have. And Daily Motion is now using all of our videos across all the sites and we help them to create a curative environment with all the premium content that we’re using and we share the revenues on sales. And that’s something we’re going to keep on doing with AOL support actually. I mean syndicating the content, helping publishers with no video strategies to get a huge amount of videos on their site with discovery tools. Sharing the revenues and keep on doing exactly what we do, there is no change of that. Host: Speaking which were here at Next New Networks, you work with them. How would-- Ran Haverno: We love Next New Networks. Host: Tell us what you know? Ran Haverno: I mean we love Next New Networks. They have great brands and specific radicals. We have thousands of videos from them and again, I mean I think that’s it’s a good thing for our marketplace, because we can now take their videos and put them into the right pages on the AOL owners and just keep on sending the Next New Networks videos across the web. When I look at it, I think that everyone syndicates to YouTube right but it's a kind of clear syndication. There's a destination. You give them the videos and then people are coming to consume the videos and their destination. But YouTube is so big that a lot of publisher especially niche ones but not only niche ones are not being discovered on YouTube. You know it’s a new job. It’s basically a portal for video. And what we’re saying to content producers is we’re the same in the sense that you're giving us the content and we create traffic for you guys and we create views for you guys. But we basically send your videos to places where the content couldn’t be discovered beforehand. So in that respect Next New Network is a very, very successful on YouTube but they're also very successful with us because we send them to a lot of niche portals and a lot other textual size that suddenly have the ability to create a video strategy with our video and our technology. And then consumers are watching Next New Networks videos on hundreds of sites. And I think that’s a real vision because the fragmentation as we know it changes the rules. And 5min’s business model basically embraces the fragmentation and AOL supports the business model that embraces the fragmentation. And I think it sends a clear message out that syndication is a key strategy for online video. We experienced a lot, new scale and we still do. We lead Com Square, Vertical charts on home, food, fashion, beauty, gardening, a lot of video against travel, a lot of verticals. So for us the acquisition meant that we want to keep the brand because the brand works and I think the content producers support us and publishers embraces us. So 5min media is going to stay, the way it is. We’re staying in our office. We’re not basically becoming into a new thing. We’ll just get more support. We get a support from a big organization that wanted to push our strategy and scale it to the next level of growth. Get more content in getting to new verticals that we never worked in music, entertainment, everything that can really be syndicated and we didn’t have the resources to deal with yet. So I just see us pushing the yes. Host: And you're going to stick around for a while. Ran Haverno: I'm going to stick around, a lot of people look at acquisition at the end of the game and I think that we actually look at it as a great opportunity to take the vision all the way through. And we got into a point where we met him on stroke. I dearly believed in what he’s trying to do and his approached towards content and the very defined strategy that he has. And we thought that the feed is so natural that we can really take 5min to be one of the three most influential online video properties in a few years. And right now we have all the resources to take the vision all the way through. And you know being in a startup that is very, very tight and when you feel your pocket all the time and there are so many initiatives and ideas you want to execute and you can't. So we’re excited.