Diversion Media CEO, Nicholas Butterworth, presented at VON explaining the thinking behind the series of niche video sites his company is creating. The concept is to build video sites in niche markets (first two are travel and snowboarding) using a combination of licensed, created, and user generated video content.


Becoming to the go-to place for video content by niche offers interesting advertising opportunities. Licensing content allows them to seed the site with professionally produced videos.

They play on building out 25 niche video sites using a custom Rails / Flash platform and Amazon S3 hosting & delivery.

The sites generate revenue through a variety of advertising strategies, with Adsense being the primary revenue driver so far. Pre-roll and sponsorships are also used.

Travelistic has 2400+ videos so far, with new content coming online every day. Butterworth doesn't think they've reached critical mass for content yet.

While some sites seem to be focusing on serialized content, including Blip.tv and Brightcove, Diversion Media seems to be closer to the model used by TurnHere in real estate, although Diversion Media takes things a bit further by aggregating licensed content and UGC.

Great concept, but could YouTube aggregate the same content within their site? They have the UGB and have deep pockets for licensing content. I doubt YouTube will start creating their own content, so that's a differentiator, but it's probably the most expensive source of content for the site.