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Will crowdsourcing disrupt the advertising business?

By | July 12, 2012, 8:08 PM PDT

Can the “crowd” be just as creative as the advertising geniuses at Mad Men’s Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce?

Poptent, a video crowdsourcing platform, announced it has raised $5.5 million to promote its video crowdsourcing approach to the advertising industry. The company says it now has a network of more than 50,000 videographers from 140 different countries at the beck and call of advertising firms that need to produce commercials.

As TechCrunch’s Ryan Lawler reports:

“To date, Poptent says it has paid out more than $5 million to videographers since being founded in 2007. That might not sound like a lot, but the rate at which its assignments are coming in and the paychecks are cut continues to accelerate. It had only paid out about $2 million by late last year, so it’s more than doubled its revenues in less than 12 months. And it’s getting some big-name brands on board: Companies like Dell, Intel, Jaguar, and Walgreens have paid for video ads and messaging produced by Poptent’s network of videographers.”

Poptent-originated ads for Southern Comfort have recently begun airing, and Dannon turned to the Poptent model for a SuperBowl ad aired in February.

Unlike many crowdsourcing engagements, participants have an opportunity to build up portfolios within the Poptent sphere.

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Joe McKendrick

About Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick

Contributing Editor, Business

Joe McKendrick is an independent analyst who tracks the impact of information technology on management and markets. He is the author of the SOA Manifesto and has written for Forbes, ZDNet and Database Trends & Applications. He holds a degree from Temple University. He is based in Pennsylvania.

Follow him on Twitter.

Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick is an independent consultant and editor. Joe has performed project work for the following companies in the IT marketspace: IBM, Systinet/HP, Teradata. He has performed project work for the following organizations in partnership with Unisphere Research (Unisphere Media): IBM, Oracle Corp., International Oracle Users Group, Oracle Applications Users Group, Professional Association for SQL Server, International DB2 Users Group, International Sybase Users Group.

He writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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