PlaySpan Brings Pay-Per-View Micropayments To Online Video Marketplace


Micropayments startup PlaySpan has primarily focused on powering transactions for virtual goods, but today the startup is moving onto videos. PlaySpan is launching its PriceYourVideo Platform which essentially allows video producers to sell views via a micropayments model.

Any video content producer can sell their videos on PlaySpan’s marketplace and can price their uploads accordingly. Producers can also donate proceeds to charity for videos that are available free elsewhere. It’s fairly simple and similar in theory to news organizations that are charging micropayments for viewing articles.

Playspan has already signed up a popular premium content publisher, Revision 3. Web shows like Diggnation, Chad Vader, and Turbo Dates are all being sold on PlaySpan’s platform. For example, you can preview an episode of Diggnation for 3 minutes but after that time period you need to pay 10 UPoints (the marketplace’s virtual currency) to view the remainder of the video. To give you a sense of the pricing, 1,000 UPoints costs $10 on PlaySpan.

Playspan also plans to allow publishers to integrate the video monetization into their own sites. The idea of micropayments for videos isn’t new; YouTube has been experimenting with this And PlaySpan will face the challenge of bringing traffic to its marketplace to actually generate views and payments for producer videos.

While PlaySpan has been steadily growing the reach of it marketplace through licensing deals with social networks, game developers, media companies and gaming platforms, it’s nice to see the startup innovating and adding new features to its platform.