Punndit

Punndit amplifies a publisher’s advertising inventory by associating user generated content (UGC) in context with source video assets.  By increasing audience engagement with the source content publishers increase not only time on their site(s) but more importantly the likelihood that the content will be shared via social media driving increased traffic and advertising revenue.  Punndit streamlines the process of capturing, hosting, and delivering video-based user generated content (UGC) benefiting content owners and publishers by augmenting their offering with low-cost-to-acquire content presented in context with their core video assets.  By lowering the overall cost of acquiring content, a major expense in the world of publishing, we increase a publisher’s profitability.

Randall Stevens brings more than 20 years of software development and industry partnership knowledge to Punndit. Randall previously founded ArchVision in 1991 and Mersive Technologies, which he co-founded in 2004. Randall offers a unique combination of expertise in software and graphics technology, coupled with a background and degree in architecture. Prior to founding Punndit, Stevens founded ArchVision, a software development firm specializing in 3D graphics technology for the design industry. In the late nineties, he successfully led the company in the development of software based on the emerging field of Image-Based Rendering (IBR) and launched the software technology Rich Photorealistic Content (RPC) currently being used by customers in more than 100 countries. Through ArchVision, Randall built relationships with the industry's leading design visualization software companies including Autodesk, Bentley Systems, Robert McNeel & Associates, Maxon, Lightworks, Newtek, EON Reality and SGI. Randall led Mersive Technologies from its infancy through two venture finance rounds totaling over $6M and helped established Mersive as a leading provider of software-based multi-projector display alignment. Randall has been instrumental in leading industry advancements through organizations and academic environments alike. He is a frequent lecturer on technology and entrepreneurship.

James Smith has over ten years experience in professional software and web development. After joining Randall Stevens at ArchVision while still a senior in high school, he led the company’s web development efforts by building an extensive e-commerce platform as well as a series of web applications designed to interface with ArchVision’s digital content management system. James continued web development for ArchVision until 2008 when he accepted a position as a Senior Software Developer at MediaTrust Inc. Drawing on his extensive experience with web and database technologies such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Ruby on Rails and ASP.NET, James developed solutions that allowed MediaTrust to connect current web applications and APIs to their existing backend architecture. Many portions of that solution were also contributed back to the open source community. After returning to ArchVision in 2009 James continued to expand and improve the company’s web service offerings while implementing new client tools designed to create a seamless and user friendly web experience for ArchVision customers.

Punndit generates revenue in three ways:

1. Monthly Software as a service fees
2. Advertising Revenue
3. Licensing White-label APIs & Services

The first way Punndit generates revenue is by charging a monthly SaaS fee for the use of the Punndit platform to publishers (website/blog owners).  With the paid version of Punndit the content owners can use their own video players and have the ability to turn off syndication of the comments being made on their respective websites/blogs preserving the traffic generated by those responses. 

With paid plans the website/blog owner will have administrative tools allowing them to monitor and control the visibility of comments.  Publishers can also make their publishing addresses available via the Punndit directory for collecting original video submissions.  Paid plans also allow Punndit to be used on private networks.  Monthly pricing plans start at $79.00 and tier to $299.00, $799.00 respectively, with custom enterprise based on the volume of content being stored, amount of traffic served, administrative features and analytics. Beyond the base pricing customers will be charged additional fees if a video goes viral with charges for additional views.

In addition to a paid plan Punndit will offer a “freemium” version for smaller publishers such as bloggers and specialty niche sites.  The free version of Punndit is used on any website by adding a small snippet of code to a webpage containing YouTube content.  As publisher volume and adoption of this model starts to grow Punndit can monetize the service by leveraging it as an advertising network.  The advertising can be in the form of pre-roll video ads or static ads displayed in the PunnBar.

The third way Punndit will generate revenue is by licensing to 3^rd party developers to integrate Punndit as a feature in their own applications.

• Punndit’s PunnBar is the only video player agnostic, asynchronous, threaded contextual video response and publishing platform available today allowing publishers to capture valuable user generated content in context with their existing content sources.  Publishers integrate the PunnBar as an extension of their existing video players with a small snippet of code enabling visitors to contribute unique, highly targeted user generated content.  Because of the contextual nature of the content it is much less susceptible to spam therefore requiring less manpower to curate.
• Companies like Zappos and Amazon currently invest heavily in video social media with the primary goal of increasing product sales.  Punndit offers a low cost solution to maximize the investment by allowing organic content to be positioned against their originating video and increasing the opportunity to go viral.
• Publishers are quickly looking for ways to eliminate anonymous commenting while encouraging communication.  Punndit offers an alternative to text based anonymous commenting.
• Advertisers are striving to find ways to place their ads in context to the video.  Punns are almost always in context allowing for a superior contextual ad placement platform.
• We believe there will be a trend for publishers to move away from aggregation sites such as YouTube toward exclusive user generated content.  Punndit will become an important part of every publisher’s infrastructure used to capture and manage their user’s contributions.
• Video commenting differs from traditional text-based commenting because video is largely syndicated while text is not.
• PunnBar is ready to deploy.  Over 18 months in development.
• Punndit does not redistribute source content and thus averts copyright issues.
• Patent Pending - focused on contextual capture and display of user generated content.