I think many of us have seen the funny videos from Jib Jab, the original one being “This Land“, chronicling the 2004 presidential campaign. Last election Jib Jab scored again with “It’s Time for some Campaigning”, shown below.
But of late, Jib Jab’s focus has been in their Starring You videos in which you insert edited photos of you and your friends into pre made comedic videos. This is the first one I ever made as a joke birthday gift for my friend Devon. A lot of my friends and contacts who live outside the SV bubble, think a web based company is just a small operation. In fact I had one friend who actually works in the finance sector comment to me that Google probably only had 1,000 employees. But any cutting edge web entity needs a lot of engineering behind it and until online advertising is far along enough where it can pay the bills, venture capital is they growth driver for any startup. Seemingly though, VC’s seem to be enamored by humor based web properties. Below we look at the near 55 million dollars three companies have raised. Jib Jab Funny or Die College Humor All I can say is wow and maybe thank you because all three are pretty awesome. Even I am a little surprised by how high these figures are. That being said, as online advertising flattens out during this recession, the question begs how are these companies going to make money? Well Jib Jab has an idea. Charging money for customizing videos. I got hooked on doing this over the past couple months and was surprised to find that when trying to make a Mother’s Day card, I was being asked to pay a yearly subscription of $15. I was at a cross roads but decided to bite the bullet as my mom is abroad and I wanted something a) funny b) customized, c) easy. Jib Jab accomplished all 3 and now has my money. Below is the finished product.
So is Jib Jab onto something here with a subscription model? My thoughts are no because other sites do not offer custom video making functionality as well as free hosting for those videos. Those things do cost money and Jib Jab knew that they could rake in some low hanging fruit with a pretty reasonable $15 fee. My guess is that they’ll likely get around 20,000 paying users by the end of the year which is not bad considering most will auto renew. As for College Humor and Funny or Die, the model would not be a good fit although both seem to be looking elsewhere for their revenue (Funny or Die is now selling ad inventory for other sites). Also both seem to be gravitating towards becoming more of a mainstream media and not a niche web property so its very possible the ROI will come from mainstream media and not subscriptions or online advertising.
About Ben Koo
Owner and editor of @AwfulAnnouncing. Recovering Silicon Valley startup guy. Fan of Buckeyes, A's, dogs, naps, tacos. and the old AOL dialup sounds
All I can say is wow and maybe thank you because all three are pretty awesome. Even I am a little surprised by how high these figures are. That being said, as online advertising flattens out during this recession, the question begs how are these companies going to make money? Well Jib Jab has an idea. Charging money for customizing videos. I got hooked on doing this over the past couple months and was surprised to find that when trying to make a Mother’s Day card, I was being asked to pay a yearly subscription of $15. I was at a cross roads but decided to bite the bullet as my mom is abroad and I wanted something a) funny b) customized, c) easy. Jib Jab accomplished all 3 and now has my money. Below is the finished product. 
