SideStream Offers New Opportunities for the Creator Economy

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Related Articles:

• What is Sidestream?
• Disrupting Transactional Video OnDemand
• SideStream Brings Social Engagement – and Earning Opportunities – to Online Movie Watching

Engagement has long been known as the end-goal for marketers seeking to keep pace with the dizzying expansion of media fragmentation. Recently, there has been a growing questioning as to the effectiveness of leveraging influencer endorsements as a means of turbocharging engagement for a product or service.

According to a 6/27/21 study published by Facebook FB, over half of consumers claim to get ideas on which products to buy from the creators they engage with online. The study also revealed another 45% of global online shoppers say they want to purchase goods and services promoted directly by the people they follow. It’s easy to see, then, that this level of effectiveness is why nearly 90% of all marketers in a 2020 Mediakix survey found the ROI from influencer/creator marketing to be comparable or better than other marketing channels they have utilized.

With creator backed marketing of products proving to be so effective, it is only natural for the market to seek new ways to grow.

Looking for ways to shake up the on-demand movie viewing experience — which hadn’t seen any meaningful innovation since Apple first launched iTunes for video in 2008 — SideStream Co-founders Neal Tiles and Kevin Pereira noticed a “white space” that led to an iteration of this “engagement” + “creator” formula with big Hollywood films added into the equation. This is the premise of the newly-launched movie sharing service, SideStream.com.

“We saw what everyone saw with respect to the ubiquity of social media in our lives today,” said Kevin Pereira, SideStream Co-founder and Chief Product Officer. “But what we also saw was no way to share passion for films, actors and genres with a community of like-minded fans that populated these social channels.” 

SideStream brings personalization to movie retailing via live-streaming, content creator commentary and online movie watch parties. Content creators can earn revenue by interacting with blockbuster Hollywood films seamlessly and legally, while film studios can diversify their revenue channels with a new way to monetize their vast content libraries.

How SideStream Empowers Content Creators

With SideStream, consumers gain a truly personalized movie-watching experience and a new way to connect with people they follow, as well as with other members of their social communities. Content creators, on the other hand, can offer live-streaming commentary on a popular film legally while earning revenue from the tickets they sell.

For the creator community, many of which are using various platforms to build and maintain their social following, SideStream represents an additional revenue opportunity where they receive 75% of the net revenue once three tickets are sold. And, unlike other platforms that require creators to spend significant time/resources feeding the content “beast” in order to earn revenue, SideStream empowers them to reach hundreds and even thousands of followers in a single viewing party simply by watching along and commenting.

How SideStream Stands Apart from the Competition

SideStream allows hosts to launch a viewing party with the option to invite 10 or 10,000 different people. Viewers watch the selected movie alongside a live onscreen host, and have the ability to interact with the host via onscreen real-time chat, and may also independently adjust the host and movie volume to their preference. No other streaming platform currently offers this capability while simultaneously compensating creators.

Is it a movie streaming service or a livestreaming platform? One of the ways SideStream can compete effectively among the “superpowers”of the streaming wars is by leveraging its hybrid appeal. Disney DIS's Disney+ allows a limited audience stream and chat alongside content, but there are no monetary incentives. Platforms like Netflix NFLX and Amazon AMZN also have “party viewing” features, but they are limited in terms of how many people can participate at once, and most have no way for participants to see the host — except to text with them on screen, with the movie. Apple’s iTunes AAPL currently has no social sharing or co-viewing features at all.

Why Creators are Choosing SideStream

While these technical differences set SideStream apart, the platform’s real competitive advantage comes from harnessing the power of its unique revenue share model. SideStream allows content creators to diversify their revenue streams — giving them a new avenue that doesn’t replace their traditional ad-based model, but rather supplements it with a transactional model. With SideStream, anyone from mega influencers to micro-influencers have the same capacity to generate earnings 43 times faster than on ad-based platforms that require massive scale for equivalent revenue.

“For influencers and creators, regardless of size, we see SideStream’s transaction model as additive to what they’re doing on ad-based services,” said Neal Tiles, CEO and Co-founder at SideStream. “We’re not looking to replace those giant platforms at all, that’s not realistic. We're a ‘change of pace’ platform for them, designed to achieve similar or greater revenue with a fraction of the audience they would need on the other services they regularly use.”

With less effort and more reward, SideStream allows influencers to have fun and be themselves as they lead a conversation about what’s taking place on screen, versus spending hours creating supplemental content.

Harley Morenstein, internet personality and co-creator of EpicMealTime, couldn’t agree more. “As a content creator, I was intrigued by the uniqueness of SideStream to provide influencers, of any size, the ability to earn serious money in a novel way that leverages popular movie titles,” he said. “It’s simple, powerful and a reason I invested early, myself.”

SideStream is currently in the midst of launching its public platform. The company recently validated the integrity of its site through real-time tests and is set to launch for live, public streaming events in the 3rd quarter of 2021.

Learn more about SideStream’s crowdfunding investment campaign here.

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.