ZEFR Launches BrandID To Give Advanced YouTube Analytics And Tools To Brands

Over the past year, Los Angeles-based startup ZEFR has been using its technology platform to help content owners identify and monetize videos on YouTube that have been uploaded by fans. Now it’s hoping to extend its technology to brands with a new product called BrandID, which enables customers to figure out just how many of their fans are discussing their products on the video network.

Once upon a time, the company was known as Movieclips and specialized in helping Hollywood studios monetize the long tail of *ahem* MOVIE CLIPS that they had gathering dust in their vaults, by putting them on YouTube and serving up ads against them. Then last summer, it rebranded as ZEFR as it is focusing on providing a robust Content ID system for finding videos that users have uploaded and monetizing them on behalf of content owners.

ZEFR has found a whole new market for that Content ID technology in major brand marketers who will now have a suite of analytics tools for identifying their influence and return on investment from campaigns on YouTube. Before BrandID, brands only had analytics for their own individual channels, so they could measure just the viewership on videos they uploaded.

But of course, YouTube is full of content that users upload in which they talk about their favorite brands. With BrandID, marketers will be able to see what all those users are saying about their brands, identify their biggest and most influential fans, and connect with them directly.

BrandID gives them a comprehensive dashboard that combines brand alerts, discovery, and insights into videos people are publishing that mention them. The insights section shows the number of videos and channels and views that user-generated videos mentioning those brands and products, notable YouTube creators and highly ranked, most engaged videos mentioning them. The dashboard also provides comprehensive competitive analysis, enabling marketers to see how their brand stacks up against competitors among fans in the same category.

The platform allows them to reach out to fans who are creating videos directly. They can send messages from their YouTube accounts as a way to reach video creators and possibly start working with them to amplify their videos. Marketers can also view comments and respond to commenters on the channels of third-party creators through the dashboard.

In addition to deep analytics tools, the platform can also be customized to provide alerts when new videos are created about a certain brand, or a competitor. It can even keep tabs on trending video memes across YouTube — you know, just in case a brand marketer wants to jump on the Gangnam Style bandwagon or whatever.

While BrandID is just entering beta, it’s already gotten a few big brands using it: P&G’s COVERGIRL and Pantene are launch partners for the SaaS-based platform. The company sees a huge opportunity to get more onboard in the coming months as BrandID really takes off.