Storybids: Product Placement with Auctions and Analytics

Last year, one of our readers launched Brandfame, a self-service online video product placement agency. A similar startup, Storybids, just launched with two key features that could coax more advertisers into the game.

Founders Joseph Morin and Juan Prado have been developing Storybids for over two years, and it shows. The interface is polished, with creators posting video pitches for advertisers to bid on. You’ll see proposals from such hit Web series as Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary and Goodnight Burbank, both of which normally command four-figure product placement deals on their own.

It will be very interesting to watch these hit shows’ performance on Storybids vis-a-vis on their own. We can do that, too, since we can see the highest bid for each proposal. If they do well on Storybids, then they would very publicly validate this self-service product placement model.

Storybids also provides SEO, superdistribution, and analytics for videos with product placements. It’s a TubeMogul-like service that lets advertisers check if they’re getting their money’s worth. This sort of automated accountability should give advertisers additional confidence when investing in product placement.

These two complementary features — auctions for creator visibility, analytics for creator accountability — could go a long way to ease advertisers’ fears of being so deeply associated with the Long Tail of online video. The site just launched, so all but one proposal shows zero bids right now. Let’s see how high they can go.