I have to admit, I’m not sure whether I want to get my billing statements in video form – but clearly some see a market for such things. This has been demonstrated by Israeli “personalized video as a service” (PVaaS – because we need more random “aaS” terms) outfit Idomoo, which picked up $ 9 million in funding on Wednesday.
Idomoo creates personalized videos for businesses that want to communicate with their customers in an unusual, eye-catching way. This could be used for bills, loyalty points updates, custom offers or any other kind of customer communications – Idomoo provides its own B2B clients with links that can then be embedded in emails or in landing pages that are personalized for specific customers.
So far, clients have included mobile operators such as Brazil’s TIM Cellular and Portugal Telecom, as well as insurance firm Generali. Here’s the sort of video we’re talking about here:
The round of equity funding was led by New York investment firm Marker LLC and, according to Idomoo president and co-founder Yaron Kalish, it will be used to push harder into the North and South American markets, as well as Europe.
AT&T recently launched video billing for some of its customers. Personally, I’m not keen on the faux familiarity these kinds of videos exude, but I can certainly see why some marketers think it’s a great idea. And hey, some consumers may like it.
What I will say, though, is that Idomoo’s product is a perfect example of the build-it-and-they-will-come nature of modern connectivity. Video already accounts for a huge amount of internet traffic, but as people’s connections get beefed up it will make more and more sense to take what was previously text-based and lightweight and wrangle it into the video format. Expect to see more in this vein.
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