SoMedia is the Uber of video production, says CEO Fleming

SoMedia (SoMedia Stock Quote, Chart, News: TSXV:VID) is disrupting the video production space in much the same way that Uber disrupted taxis, says founder and co-CEO George Fleming.

Fleming today presented at the Euro Pacific Canada Digital Media and Technology Conference in Toronto.

“I know that everything is being described the Uber of something,” he said. “But it’s honestly who we are most often compared to. It’s a classic disruption play.”

SoMedia, says Fleming, is looking to move digital video production out of the dark ages of mom and pop-based solutions into a scalable and reliable solution for content production. Fleming compares it to the change that happened in web site production, pointing to disruptors like WordPress and Wix, whose templates made custom coding web developers obsolete.

In April, SoMedia announced a deal with Google Partners, launching a new full-service video ad production platform called SoMedia Ads. The company says the service will make ordering, managing and deploying original video ads for YouTube simple and convenient.

Fleming says a problem that Google has is that all of the advertisers on YouTube are large companies, while a huge swath of small and medium sized businesses are shut out because there was no, simple, inexpensive supplier of online video ads.

Euro Pacific Canada analyst Rob Goff says the deal with Google could be a game changer for SoMedia, which he notes has spent eight years and approximately $20-million to build out its cloud-based video content production platform. The analyst says he believes recent industry forecasts that predict online video advertising will grow by 25% to 30% over the next two years.

“The prospective scope of the market accessible through the Google Partner network represents a paradigm shifting opportunity given the conservative market share, adoption, and usage assumptions,” said Goff in a recent report to clients. “Even the scale of the trial should be game changing when measured against SoMedia’s corporate history of roughly 2,500 videos sold up to the end of Q314. While details are not public, the program clearly demonstrates Google’s commitment to driving SME adoption of video advertising and SoMedia’s ability to gain the confidence of Google on the project.”

Disclosure: SoMedia Networks is an annual sponsor of Cantech Letter.