Australian Online Platform Disrupts Global Advertising Industry

Melbourne-based Genero.com has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing online media platforms, following the successful completion of a $4 million capital raising.

The group has added Ellerston Ventures (Ellerston Capital’s new venture capital fund) as one of its new strategic shareholders and the capital raise will allow Genero to open offices in Sydney, New York and Singapore over the next months, as well as grow its existing teams in London and Melbourne.

Genero’s major shareholders, founders and joint chief executive officers are experienced online and marketing professionals Andrew Lane and Mick Entwisle.

The pair launched Genero in 2009 and have since created a global creative community of 300,000 filmmakers across 180 countries, generating thousands of videos and creative ideas for clients across music, technology, automotive, food, travel, causes, documentaries, short films, fashion, sport and fast moving consumer goods.

Combined with its creative community, Genero’s online software platform allows agencies, publishers and brands to manage and collaborate across the end-to-end creative and video production process, where clients present a brief to producers and directors, who then pitch their ideas and credentials for the job.

The cloud-based platform allows clients to move from inefficient processes across email, spreadsheets, share drives and paperwork and offers a complete video content production solution that can be used across an agency or by brands looking to bring content marketing in-house.

Lane said, “We have found a gap in the market where we can help large and small clients access large volumes of short video content required to keep audiences engaged online and in social media.

“The traditional ad agency and production company model was built around producing larger budget TV commercials, but the type of content marketers need today needs to be constantly updated and fresh with smaller budgets and flexibility to use targeted content for the right audience.”

The productions Genero has facilitated have ranged from $1,000 to $300,000, with clients including HP, Qantas, Airbnb, eBay, Sony, Lexus, Pernod-Ricard, Visit Britain, Icelandair, Mediacom, Saatchi & Saatchi, Havas, Ogilvy, major record labels Sony, Warner and Universal and a host of music artists including George Harrison, Alabama Shakes, Muse, Robert Plant, Moby, Alicia Keys, David Guetta, David Bowie.

Entwisle added, “Creation of video content should be cheaper and easier for clients today given the much larger number of people who can now create it and advancements in camera technology and related software.

“Most brand clients are not seeing those benefits though working via the old agency and production company model because of the overheads and resource intensive legacy processes, so we set Genero up to offer a solution to that huge growing need. A large portion of our clients are actually agencies, looking to adapt their model and offer this solution to their brand clients.”

Ellerston Ventures investment director, Anthony Klok, said, “Our view is that the market will shift to the automated channel solutions necessary to create large volumes of video content cost-effectively, and that Ellerston Venture’s investment in Genero will drive commercialisation of the business on a global scale”.

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