Click on any video link at Jokeroo.com and opportunities for sharing content are in your face. You can send a funny clip to 10 friends at once without changing pages, or share it with friends on Facebook.com. The site has viral video at its core, but also pushes greeting cards, online games, newsletters and user forums. Last December, Jokeroo.com recorded five million unique visitors – about 80% from the US and 9% from Canada. That’s 450,000 Canadians for December, if you do the math.
Now, the Brampton, Ont.-based company plans to merge Jokeroo.com with two other recently acquired file-sharing communities by mid-February to grow the network’s audiences. It also plans to seek out partnerships with mobile carriers in Canada (prior to implementing a similar strategy in the US). Jokeroo Entertainment CEO Chris Pavlovski says the company will merge its user base with that of recently-acquired Imagebeaver.com (which he says generated five million unique visitors in December) and FileCabin.com next month.
The Jokeroo.com audience demo – verified by comScore Media Metrix – is 59% male, 41% female, 75% A18-54 and 60% A18-34. About 70% of the site’s audience earns over $40,000 per year, and 20% earns over $100,000 per year. In Canada, the site’s audience has attracted Yahoo! Canada, which recently ran a test commercial campaign with Jokeroo.com. In the US, the site has run ad campaigns for Proctor & Gamble, Sony, AOL, Staples, ING Direct. Jokeroo.com also provides some content for comedy video channels owned by AOL.
‘YouTube needs a competitor and we are it,’ Pavlovski tells MiC. ‘Our platform is designed so people who go to Jokeroo.com aren’t going to be flashed with video ads all the time. Consumers are hesitant to watch commercials on the Internet, and if they get it on every single video, it’s going to get annoying.’
The CPM for clickable pre-roll video ads (ranging from five seconds to 30 second spots) is about $25 and banners are $3, while full-on sectional sponsorships are pegged at $10,000.
