The player: Rob Lane, CEO and co founder of Overlay.tv, an online video technology provider based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
The play: Overlay.tv creates tools that let online video creators add interactivity to their videos, such as animation, text, widgets and narration over the video. The company is best known for its work with the band Jonas Brothers, for whom Overlay.tv created tools that let fans online sing along with the band’s new single “Lovebug” and record themselves as they sing. Mr. Lane said 54% of people who visited Jonasbrothers.com during a monthlong period created their own karaoke video. “The majority of our business is all about getting people to engage more with the content,” he said. The services and platform are free; Overlay.tv charges a fee to partners who use its technology or white-label capabilities.
The pitch: Mr. Lane said Overlay.tv’s tools are sophisticated enough to allow for more graphics, animation and rich media than its competitors.
In the mix: As a provider of interactive Web video tools, Overlay.tv competes with big names such as Google and YouTube, which offer text animation for videos, and with smaller companies such as Veeple. Besides the Jonas Brothers, Overlay.tv’s customers include Disney, Nettwerk Records and Canadian media company Transcontinental.
The money guys: Overlay.tv has raised $7.7 million in two rounds of funding from investors Celtic House Ventures, Edgestone Capital Partners and Tech Capital Partners.
The pros: The engagement rate for Overlay.tv customers is high so far.
The cons: Overlay.tv is competing against big incumbents like YouTube and nimble startups like Veeple for a small piece of the online video market.
Background: Mr. Lane co-founded the company in 2007 with Tyler Cope and Nadav Zin. The beta service launched a year ago. Before co-founding Overlay.tv, Mr. Lane worked at Tropic Networks, Marconi and Fujitsu. He holds a master in business administration from Cranfield School of Management at Cranfield University in the U.K. He lives in Ottawa.
(Updated second paragraph to clarify Overlay.tv's fee structure)
Comments (1)
Respectfully, I think you miss the essence of the competitive landscape. I am not certain about Overlay's strategy, but I do not think they are trying to compete with YouTube. That would be dumb. Players like ourselves and Overlay are attempting to reach the level above UGC. Veeple, for instance, aims at the mid-market where professional content is placed on business websites and then syndicated across the web. YouTube serves the millions of individuals. We aim our cloud based platform specifically at businesses that are changing the way they deliver their messaging. The other great thing is that it is wonderful to see folks like Veeple and Overlay push the innovation envelope.
Posted by scott broomfield | March 8, 2009 10:09 PM