Web Video Viewership Soars 40% and Revver Is Making People Really Mad

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Today is a 2-for-1 post.  First, the latest web video statistics from Neilsen Online have been released and web video just continues to grow and grow.  March saw 9.6 billion video streams by an estimated 130 million viewers.  That’s up 9% since last month and up nearly 40% from March of last year.

Here’s a chart showing where everyone seems to be going to watch web video:

Now onto part 2. Over the past couple weeks I’ve done a few posts on the sorry financial state of video sharing sites.

And now there’s news that one of these sites, Revver, is making their user’s really mad.  As in, really, really mad.

Why?

Well, Revver has always been a haven for video content producers who want to make some money from their videos.  Revver shares 50% of the advertising revenue they receive with their user’s.

Problem is, it appears that they decided to just stop paying people.

Revver displays ad’s from Google in their videos.  Then Google pays Revver.  So Revver has the money.  They are just not releasing it to their content producers.

Patrick Sell is one of these people.  Revver has owed him over $1,500 for quite a while.  Though he has repeatedly contacted them, he gets no answer.  “In my mind, this is tantamount to theft as the money was paid to them and they are not meeting their pledge to share the ad revenue. What irks me is that Google paid them the money already,” says Sell.

And he’s not alone. Michael Michaud, one of three co-creators for Channel Awesome, is owed over $4,500 by Revver.  “We’ve never been paid once,” Michaud says.  And although he has contacted Revver many times, he add’s “They don’t say anything that’s legit. They stopped mentioning payments in December”.

Both have removed or are in the processing of removing all of their videos from Revver.  Sell has decided to host his own videos and Michaud has moved onto Blip.TV (which also offers revenue sharing)…where he says his group has earned $40,000 in the past 6 months.  No word though on whether he’s actually received a check.