Glam Media launching revenue-sharing video platform
Glam CEO Samir Arora
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET Networks)CARLSBAD, Calif.--Glam Media is launching a new platform for content distribution, the GlamTV Platform. It will allow the video assets in its woman-focused network of sites to be shared to new destinations, and more importantly, everyone in the value chain of the distribution will collect a piece of the advertising revenue. Videos on the Brightcove platform will also work on GlamTV.
"It's a rights-managed platform end to end," Glam Media CEO Samir Arora told me at the D6 conference here. An example he provided: Let's say the editor of SheFinds, an independent site, saw some video on a Glam site that she wanted for her site.
On the TV Platform, she would grab the embed code for the video, but unlike with a YouTube video, once the media played, all the participants in the value chain would share in the advertising revenue--SheFinds, the Glam site that acquired the video, and potentially the contract video producer as well. Arora was pleased to remind me that Glam is currently running over-$50 CPM ad rates, so its publishers can afford to split some of their revenues.
The Glam TV Platform will also allow publishers to pick and choose videos from around the network, bundle them into their own branded widgets, and then make those widgets available to others in the network. Again, when the widgets play videos, all participants get a piece of the action.
Glam makes this economy function by securing and managing the rights for all the video assets that go into its network. In most cases, the company acquires blanket rights for videos, but it can also accept more restrictive rights from publishers who want to control where the assets they paid for end up.
Various display options for GlamTV content.
The content-publishing platform lets users build widgets with custom video playlists.
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Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
