A.I. Makes Videos Affordable; Human Experts Make Them Actually Good

Verblio, which helps companies power marketing and SEO with relevant, expert content, announced it has acquired Automagical, which uses AI to instantly create video for any post or story. Verblio has added a surprise element to Automagical’s technology: actual human beings who are topic experts — and video editing mavens. And so Verblio is also announcing the launch of Verblio Videos, which let content marketers easily add better-quality video for any post or story — without breaking their budget.

“We loved what Automagical created,” said Steve Pockross, Verblio CEO. “AI made video suddenly affordable. But there was a problem: to talk to people, you really need people. AI can manage the heavy-lifting of video creation, but it’s not great at nuance, or understanding double-entendres or emotion. To make a video any company would be happy to share really demands human experts with deep knowledge of a specific content area. Verblio already does that, so it’s an excellent fit.”

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Verblio Videos (or Verblio Vids, as they are increasingly called):

• Help content marketers effectively double the amount of outreach to customers and audience by easily adding quality, curated and expertly edited video to any written or social media content;
• Use AI for the time-consuming parts of video creation, like basic storyboards;
• Add human subject-matter experts to make sure that both the content and the graphic and music choices match your brand;
• Are extremely affordable at $85 per video.

Kevin Raheja, who co-founded Automagical and is an executive at HubSpot, noted, “At HubSpot, I noticed that a large percentage of our 55,000+ Marketing Hub customers use a blog as a central part of their inbound marketing strategy — but there is a huge challenge to afford video content at scale. So we built Automagical to take written content you’ve already created and automatically turn that content into video — to increase engagement on social media, and send more traffic to the original written content source. Like a trailer for the original content.

“But we discovered that AI can’t do really great video on its own, so we are delighted to see Verblio add its own technology, along with the human curation and editing services it already does so well, to help content marketers compete with anyone, with video,” Raheja added.

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Video has long been touted as the next wave to help marketers reach their audiences on multiple platforms. Verblio spent time figuring out how to deliver video that falls somewhere between tacky AI videos and highly produced, multi-thousand-dollar videos, at a price point even smaller companies can afford.

“We’ve removed the pain of creating and publishing videos for digital marketers, and we’re excited to introduce the world to Verblio Videos,” said Paul Zalewski, Verblio Vice President of Marketing. “We use the best parts of AI and machine learning to handle the storyboarding process, and then put human beings back in control. It’s not Academy-Awards material — but it’s not mockable, robot-produced video, either.”

The terms of the deal were not released. For more information on the acquisition, check out Verblio’s blog.

About Verblio: Verblio provides a complete approach to multimedia content creation with a focus on quality writing and SEO. Our network of 3,000 U.S.-based writers are subject matter experts in more than 40 unique industries, producing content in fields both broad and hyper-niche, from astrology to zoology. Originally founded by a former journalist in 2011, Verblio now serves over 1,500 businesses every month from beautiful Boulder, CO. Our combined expertise, easy-to-use platform, engaged writers, and personalized support produces highly effective content, and our system of superior writer-to-client matching sets us apart.

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