5by is Songza For Video, With Ads

If you’re like most people, you need a break during the workday.  If you’re like a lot of people, that break is spent watching videos on YouTube. Startup 5by hopes to improve that behavior by providing highly curated content for your video binges, much like Sonza does for music.  Over 100,000 videos have been curated by 5by’s small team so far, and third-party content partners are being added to curate videos as well, targeting users to receive videos mixed with native ads.  The company is already in talks with two major television manufacturers about incorporating the service in the next generation of smart TVs, so they might be onto something.  The incorporation of native advertisements with the videos could also bring a fresh look at how to smoothly integrate ads into a difficult to monetize context.