One of the more popular video services on the planet Vimeo, has announced that it has acquired an American startup VHX. VHX recently launched a feature which allows its users to sell subscriptions to the video content they host on their video distribution platform, not unlike what iTunes is offering to its artists. Not coincidentally, Vimeo introduced a similar feature to its service in 2015, but the company is apparently much more excited about VHX’s own solution for the video subscription-selling business.
That’s pretty much what the chief executive officer of Vimeo Kerry Trainor said after announcing the acquisition of VHX earlier today. Trainor described the startup’s technology as much more robust than the one Vimeo is working with at the moment, concluding that it made sense for Vimeo, i.e. its owner IAC to acquire the entire company with all of its solutions and employees. Trainor stressed that “this isn’t an acquihire” before explaining that the current plan is to use VHX’s proprietary service within Vimeo’s own service. Trainor wasn’t feeling very talkative when asked about a specific price IAC paid for VHX, though it has already been confirmed that the company raised over $10 million since 2010, half of which was obtained last year, mostly thanks to Comcast.
Vimeo currently boasts around 200 million of monthly viewers and while that isn’t even a fifth of a number YouTube has, it’s still large enough to make some serious money though. Up until recently, the company was only doing that by selling subscriptions aimed at prosumers who wanted additional features out of it. Namely, unlike its competitors such as YouTube, Vimeo doesn’t feature video ads. And while the subscription-selling business isn’t doing bad by any means (as the company currently has around 675,000 subscribers), it has recently also started selling and renting videos. That’s also the gist of what VHX has been doing for some time and – according to Vimeo – in a more efficient manner. It remains to be seen how will this move impact the end users of the popular video service and whether it’ll end up being beneficial for Vimeo who also recently ‘pulled a Netflix’ and started funding some video content on its own.