Dailymotion, a global video hosting site under French media conglomerate Vivendi, announced its formal launch in South Korea on Thursday, pledging to cement its position here as a premium video-streaming site through selective curation backed by premium content from its global and local media content partners.

“Over time, we’ve found that audiences are more interested in watching more high-quality videos, rather than user-generated content,” Dailymotion Chairman and CEO Maxime Saada said at a press conference in Seoul.

“In addition, our target audience (users aged 18-49) often doesn’t have enough time in the day to find videos. And they want the top selection, which is generally provided by professional content providers,” Saada said.


Taking in such needs, Dailymotion said it focuses its content on four main areas found to be of highest interest to users today -- news, sports, music and entertainment.

Dailymotion highlighted its sources of content including major news providers like CNN and the Financial Times as well as fashion magazine Vogue and Disney. In Korea, it has teamed up with local broadcasters MBC and Channel A, content producer CJ E&M as well as K-pop music agency JYP Entertainment.

Korea’s emerging content creators, such as Sellev, 72Seconds and MakeUs of content studio Dingo, have also joined Dailymotion as content partners.

Personalized video curation is another competitive edge of Dailymotion, according to Saada. The firm employs artificial intelligence recommendation algorithms, as well as human curation experts to select and present timely, trendy and relevant content to users, Saada explained.

“It’s basically bringing users a comprehensive selection of videos -- including both content they are inclined to like, as well as content that is trending or important around you.”

Dailymotion said that on top of fulfilling the needs of Korean viewers, it could also become an effective platform to spread content generated by Korea to worldwide audiences.


“Korea has an amazing appetite for innovation, amazing talent, and a unique appetite and ability to distribute this content (including K-pop and films) to not only Korea and Asia, but all over the world.” said Antoine Nazaret, Dailymotion’s vice president of content for the Asia-Pacific region.

“And we share the goal of helping Korean creators reach audiences worldwide, while being committed to protecting the intellectual property of online content,” he said.

Launched in 2005 and based in France, Dailymotion attracts around 300 million visitors and records 3 billion views monthly, with the strongest viewership emerging from Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Dailymotion was acquired by Vivendi in 2015, and the online video site has been undergoing a major transformation since then. Vivendi’s subsidiaries include Universal Music, France’s cable channel Canal+ as well as mobile game developer and publisher Gameloft.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)