• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, March 14, 2012

Online video advertising company Outrigger Media’s latest project “Bourdain’s Travel Crew ” is generating a lot of buzz as a smart and well-done vehicle for branded video content with sponsor Tumi, but it also may be the start of many such deals that Outrigger engineers in the coming months.

The show has already amassed nearly 60,000 views on YouTube for the first three episodes since its launch last week, and next month Outrigger plans to roll out a platform to connect brands and producers, as it did with Tumi and the production company Zero Point Zero for “Bourdain’s Travel Crew.”

The so-called OpenSlate online video analysis platform will include qualitative data on the audience makeup, consumer habits and social sharing of thousands of online video producers, said Outrigger’s CEO Mike Henry. He expects to have 8,000 to 10,000 video producers included in the platform at launch. OpenSlate is not so much a matchmaking service as it is a media buying and planning tool that agencies can use when looking for new sponsorship opportunities for their clients.

“We are quantifying the quality of a given producer at a high level and then a more granular level like engagement, influence, reach and also consistency,” Henry said. “It’s not so much a measure of the audience, but a measure of the content and how a producer’s audience responds to it. For example, if the audience of Producer X is three times more likely to share Producer X's video, or like it, or tweet it, or if they do so only when the video is about a certain subject, a brand should be able to know and value that.”

There have been other efforts to create online video buying marketplaces such as HitViews and PlaceVine, which was bought last year by video syndication service AlphaBird. Neither one achieved much traction, but Henry contends this sort of marketplace insight is what’s needed in online video to lure new marketers. “One of the reasons I was excited about the Tumi deal is there are hundreds of things like this,” he said. “If you can get a brand like Tumi to step up with a decent budget, that can make a big difference.”

He hopes to have agencies on board in the coming months.

Outrigger has handled video sales for programmers such as Warner Music, EMI, Next New Networks, MGM and Associated Press.