Even though this company has not reached an astounding popularity in its home country – Poland – it has already cooperated with international brands such as Coca-Cola, Volvo, Porsche, Sony, Danone or P&G. ViralSeed is a platform for video seeding – promoting them by native placement on websites, blogs, and in social media. The videos quickly go viral, what in turn makes their viewers more involved.
“I’ve been working in marketing for years now. Since 2008, I deal mostly with video marketing,” said Marcin Dudkiewicz, the CEO ViralSeed. “When I moved back from the UK to Poland in 2011, I decided to start my own business and do what I’m good at. This is how the idea of working on video seeding – not as a subcontractor, but as an entrepreneur – first came to be.”
How exactly does ViralSeed work? The advertiser provides a link to his YouTube video and specifies the target demographics, their location, and interests. ViralSeed places the native video on multiple websites, blogs, and in social media. The advertiser pays in a CPV model, but only for the views from the target audience. He also gets an access to all statistics and can monitor the virality of his video in YouTube Analytics. 62.5% of videos promoted by ViralSeed make it to the trending or Most Popular lists on YouTube, what increases the chances of a viral effect.
When the startup was making the first steps, the work was mostly manual. At this stage, the platform is fully automated for both advertisers and publishers, who link to the videos on their websites. Thanks to automation, ViralSeed can run video seeding campaigns for companies from all over the world. Dudkiewicz hopes that one day, Apple will join the list of his customers.
ViralSeed has been bootstrapping since the very start. Dudkiewicz, together with the co-founder Maciej Krzyszycha (a rally driver) have been financing the project until they reached the breakeven point. Currently, the company brings enough profit so they can develop it further. Recently, they have been concentrating on growth hacking to promote ViralSeed among prospective customers.
The ViralSeed team is also working on a SaaS solution – a platform for monitoring and analyzing the reach of social videos. The users will be able to track any video in social media, analyze the involvement of the audience by e.g. likes or shares, and find influencers who might increase the virality of their clips. Their platform will also provide daily top charts of viral videos, creators, and influencers and have an option to run your own campaign promoting certain videos.
