Scott Mahoney: Making Online Video Clickable

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>> Vince: Hi, welcome to Dog and Pony. I'm Vince Thompson. Media consumption is changing dramatically, and advertisers are working hard to keep up with consumers as they gravitate to consuming more video online. Ads are becoming interactive, and a lot more engaging. Scott Mahoney is the founder of Compulsion TV, a simple online tool making video advertisements actually clickable. So we're not talking here about just clicking videos and making them play, we're talking about clicking and interacting with elements within the video.

>> Scott: Exactly. So what we do is we have a technology that allows the owner of the video to what we call hyperspot. In other words, identify things inside the video, and allow the users, or the public to actually click on the items in the video, and link out to a web page, a MySpace page, an advertisement, you name it.

>> Vince: So Scott, you're really pulling together three different constituencies. You've got the viewers, you've got the publishers that are publishing the concept for the viewers, and then you have the advertisers. Can you just walk us through what the value is for each of these parties?

>> Scott: For viewers, or the viewing public, compulsion is advertising by choice. We give them the opportunity to decide whether or not they want to be advertised to. And they make that choice by actually clicking inside the video screen. For the video owner, what Compulsion does is open up an entire universe of new advertising inventory, where historically there was no advertising, now they're increasing their revenues tenfold. For advertisers, Compulsion enables them to basically get in front of the right person at the right time like never before.

>> Vince: How do they pay for this?

>> Scott: We usually let people use Compulsion for a month or two, maybe even three months for free, and then we let them understand the value of that. And then we sit down at the table again and we say what do you guys think?

>> Vince: So that's really the stage of where your business is today.

>> Scott: Yeah.

>> Vince: You're looking for good partners.

>> Scott: We like distributors, so websites that have an audience that also understands Compulsion, and wants to get this thing in front of their audience.

>> Vince: Yes.

>> Scott: Those are really nice deals, and partnerships with content providers, or content creators, I guess maybe is an old term. And then of course, we're always talking to potential advertisers, retailers, directly to brands. We're stuck right in the middle organizing everybody, and coordinating everybody for this to be pulled off correctly.

>> Vince: Got some video on our website, how do we take advantage of your tools?

>> Scott: Subscribe, or become a member of Compulsion. We give you an account, this account allows you to upload video to our system. We give you a workbook, and in this workbook it shows you where all your hyperspots are, which are blank in the beginning, and then allows you to decide what should happen with these blank hyperspots.

>> Vince: And then once you have that, do you output that into a video player? Is it your video player that we then put on our website?

>> Scott: So then we give you access to our player, and you can revisit your hyperspot workbook whenever you want, and make changes whenever you want in real time. And no matter where your video lives, and no matter how many times it's been embedded in different blogs and sites, those changes will be made in real time.

>> Vince: Where'd you get the money?

>> Scott: We thought the most important part was to file for patent protection, at least in the United States, and we paid for that out of our own pockets. I would say the skill sets, and free time that we all had was another way that we paid for this, by contributing you know, actually writing code, and you know, writing functional specs, and all that stuff.

>> Vince: Still, you're working without a paycheck for a while. How do people afford that?

>> Scott: Well we make a little bit of money here and there. We did take a distribution twice, and we realized that was a mistake. We should have reinvested it into the company. So yeah, I think we finally realized it's probably time to go get some funding.

>> Vince: How many people are involved with the company today?

>> Scott: The original five founders, we have a board of advisors, twenty sales guys.

>> Vince: What's been the hardest part of running the business?

>> Scott: Having five wives. And then all the employees are kind of like the children. And managing all those relationships on a daily basis, that's the hardest thing.

>> Vince: So you've got your video up, and you've got a relationship with the company. What's this, what are the pulse reports?

>> Scott: The true power of Compulsion is we show you where people are actually clicking in the video, and on what.

>> Vince: Anything scare you?

>> Scott: It's really, really tough to know whether or not you're making the right decision. Going into this I heard that you really have to trust your gut, a lot of people say, and it's so true. You know, you have to intuit a lot doing this, and to decide which one is right and which one is wrong, that's, that takes a lot of intuition.

>> Vince: Scott Mahoney, co-founder of Compulsion TV. Thanks so much for being with us today. As always, if you have questions, comments, or ideas for guests, please email us. You can do so at info@dogandpony.com. I'm Vince Thompson, thanks for watching.

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