As the media and digital media industries embark upon another Advertising Week -- this one seemingly even more chock-full of panels, presentations, and parties than in years past -- I'm often being asked about the growth of syndication in the digital video ecosystem. It's an increasingly important role. Let me explain.
As advertising and digital media professionals, we all know about the fragmentation of the traditional web, and the fact that there is huge volume of viewership outside of the top 10 properties. In fact, we all also know that much of the most engaged audience is found outside of major media properties. Marketers and industry experts have been telling us it's been true for ten years.
The same thing is happening in video today. The medium of video -- with its sight, sound and motion -- affords that emotional connection that excites marketers and drives consumer behavior. Marketers will increasingly look to video to create meaningful emotional connections with their consumers in a way that's never been done before.
For too long now, marketers have only been looking to the well-known sites and ad networks to reach consumers of video. That phenomenon changed a decade ago in the traditional web, and it's changing in the video ecosystem today. And those same marketers are increasingly looking beyond YouTube and Hulu to create those connections.
I'm proud to say that my company, Grab Media, is leading the charge. In fact, over the last twelve months, we are the fastest growing video property in the comScore top 30, when measured by either unique viewers or total video views. We have grown our audience by more than 200 percemt in the last twelve months, and total video views are up nearly 300 percent in that same period. No major property has grown faster.
So why such rapid growth? Let's face it... video can be hard for a website owner. It's hard to produce, and hard to deliver in a format that looks remotely professional. Contrast that with building a traditional website of passable quality which requires little more than a high school English class and access to an HTML coding book from the local library; delivering a professional website that incorporates video has historically been daunting for many.
That's where distributed media companies like Grab Media come in to play. We make professionally-produced video easily available for sites to license and use. On top of that, we provide publishers the tools to automate the curation and publishing of video, another key to unlocking the potential of video in the independent web. With those important tools, video is easy.
The mission of advertising-supported video distribution companies like Grab Media is to create video views and bring along the engaged audiences that come with them. In this Advertising Week, keep an ear out for the increasingly important role of video distribution. You'll be in good company.