Dailymotion is repositioning itself to hope to achieve profitability almost 20 years after its launch, in a landscape dominated by YouTube, TikTok and Vimeo (AFP/Archives/Martin BUREAU)
Expanded offer for professionals, vertical videos and appeals to content creators: Dailymotion is repositioning itself to hope to achieve profitability almost 20 years after its launch, in a landscape dominated by YouTube, TikTok and even Vimeo.
At the end of March, Dailymotion, whose video player is used by 90% of media in France, announced that it was expanding its offering for businesses, particularly in the commerce, marketing, internal communications and event broadcasting sectors. live.
The company therefore offers, against a subscription, a video hosting solution, technological support, easy and customizable integration of the video player and data analysis.
Called “Dailymotion Pro”, the offer targets 10,000 customers by 2028 and “must contribute to the growth and return to balance of Dailymotion”, indicated Guillaume Clément, director of operations, during a conference of press.
The company has been loss-making for years although, thanks to double-digit growth, it appears to be getting closer to profitability.
Since 2019, the group had accumulated more than 182 million euros in losses, La Lettre reported in July 2023.
They stood at 36.6 million euros in 2022, according to the media, but turnover increased by 29.5% that year, said owner Vivendi.
For 2023, the forecast budget anticipated a deficit of 26.8 million, according to La Lettre, which has not been made official by the parent company.
– Survivor –
Created in 2005, a month after YouTube, by the French Benjamin Bejbaum and Olivier Poitrey, Dailymotion was, in its beginnings, a tricolor standard, a pioneer in video sharing.
But, quickly, it no longer stood up to the American competitor, bought by Google in 2006.
“It is not enough to have a technical solution, you have to be able to ramp up very quickly” and acquire an international dimension, which requires a lot of money, explains to AFP Julien Pillot, economist specializing in cultural industries at the ‘INSEEC.
Faced with the billions of dollars invested by Google in YouTube, in an ultra-competitive universe, “there are a lot of people in the graveyard and Dailymotion has the merit of having resisted”, he adds.
Element of explanation: after a turbulent shareholder history, punctuated by State interventions to prevent a sale abroad, the takeover by Orange to recapitalize the company, Dailymotion has since the acquisition by Vivendi in 2015 “a strong and stable shareholder base”, for Mr. Pillot.
In the shadow of the powerful, ultra-generalist YouTube, which acts as a content “hypermarket”, Dailymotion has refocused on the professional market, like platforms like Vimeo, Brightcove and JW.
A situation experienced by a large number of Internet start-ups, “which had tried to develop among the general public by counting on markets of several million Internet users and which, ultimately, realized that it “It was very difficult to make free or almost free models profitable”, underlines to AFP Pierre-Jean Benghozi, research director at the CNRS and specialist in the digital economy.
– “Competitive advantage” –
But the company has not abandoned the general public, since it launched a vertical video application in 2023, accompanied by a call to content creators, which seems to be working on TikTok’s flowerbeds.
Dailymotion, which claims 400 million monthly active users, said it had multiplied the time spent on its platform by 5 with this redesign.
However, this is still a far cry from YouTube’s 2.5 billion monthly users or TikTok’s more than 1.7 billion.
For Julien Pillot, the mistake consists of constantly comparing Dailymotion to these giants.
“It’s like comparing a mid-table Ligue 1 football club, like RC Lens, to Real Madrid,” he noted. “They do the same sport but their goals are not the same.”
The French platform, however, has a competitive advantage, according to him, at a time when Europe is legislating on the traceability of data and the security of their hosting.
“Being European can give them an additional commercial argument with companies compared to their competitors, because they must comply,” believes Mr. Pillot.
© 2024 AFP
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