To Wibbitz or not to Wibbitz: that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler to create your own video content or have Wibbitz’s 100% automated text-to-video service do it for a piece of the adshare revenue, in the hope of suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – i.e. increased revenue – is certainly something content publishers should consider.
Wibbitz, is an online site and computerized video service that was founded in 2011 by Zohar Dayan and Yotam Cohen, two fresh-faced charming Israeli computer science geeks. What Wibbitz does is analyze text content, summarize it, and grab video from public media, licensed images and allowed sites to create video clips of those stories.
Wibbitz first came to my attention, some two years ago, when Dayan gave a presentation on his product at The Israel Conference in Los Angeles. Their pitch then, much like today, is that while video content gets more attention than text (and will get even more attention going forward), producing original video can be time and cost intensive. Wibbitz, however, can provide short video versions of stories in a less than a few minutes. And the cost: nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, Wibbitz garners revenue by taking a piece of the video ad revenue publishers accrue on their sites from Wibbitz created videos.
Wibbitz, with offices in Tel Aviv and New York, has grown and improved: They can now produce video content from text in ten seconds. They also have sophisticated text to speech capabilities so that your videos can have narration. However, the question remains: How good is machine created video?
The answer, based on the sample videos on Wibbitz’s site, is that as long as you are just looking for a headline type summary of the news item, it’s good enough. Wibbitz delivers a professional looking and sounding product that is at the level of a newsbreak you might see on CNN Headline News or RT or in the back of New York City Taxicab. Wibbitz favors news stories, which are better suited to summarization than, say, more nuanced or artistic content such as personal essays.
At the same time, understanding that news organization still insist on editorial control Wibbitz now provides a certain amount of customization, allowing users to edit or reorganize the elements of their videos, and to have a professional narration added (done by a human, no less!).
Wibbitz is now creating some 10,000 videos a day using its platform for their clients who include some 70 publishers with international audiences. Wibbitz also produces several hundred videos every day that clients can brand and use on their own sites. According to Wibbitz’s Hilary Kay, “Sports, Entertainment, Technology and Finance” are the most popular types of content that are most successful on Wibbitz. Which makes sense, as these are the most headline-ready stories.
The folks at Wibbitz have raised $10.8 Million in funding from sources such as Horizon Ventures, NantMbobile, Initial Capital, lool ventures and Kima Ventures. They believe that the ability to turn articles into video to be distributed and monetized is invaluable to smaller players in the media arena, and could help to level the field, allowing smaller organizations to stay competitive and forge new revenue streams. Currently, according to Wibbitz’s PR deck, partners using their text-to-video service include, Israeli media properties Haaretz, the Times of Israel and Ynet, and such international publishers as IndiaToday, The Times of India, and Mundo Deportivo.
No one really knows how inexpensive or easy video production may become, or who (or what) may appear to provide a way to do it faster, better, cheaper. However, Wibbitz is a tool that is available now (for publishers; not, alas, for individuals) that delivers simple broadcast quality brandable video that manages, to quote Hamlet, to: “suit the action to the word, and the word to the action.”
