OnCam launches professional-grade video platform for brands with huge audiences

The brand, celebrity, retailer, or media company that wants to connect with and capitalize on its millions of fans can turn to OnCam, a new video publishing platform that enables web, mobile, and TV broadcasts to audiences of up to 10 million people.

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OnCam, which formally launched a beta version of its product today at DEMO Fall 2012, is designed to host massive video events that can be live streamed, recorded, distributed to multiple mediums, and published pretty much anywhere on the web. The startup has already attracted notable partners such as Untitled Entertainment and Bunim-Murray Productions.

The service allows up to 12 people to participate in a live-streamed video chat event while millions tune in to watch, comment, and even shop. The offering, which is intended to be as rudimentary to use as Twitter, can be likened to a professional-grade version of video chat services like Google Hangouts, Airtime, and Tinychat.

“Google hangouts leaves you unsatisfied like you wanted more,” said founder Joe Shapiro on stage at DEMO. Shapiro said that the technology is a three-year work in progress, and boasts features like a facial analytics engine (“it gives you the power to know if your audience is happy or sad”) and instant video publishing in the cloud.

The company’s clientele can fully brand their channels and monetize their video events in a number of ways such as pay-per-view, subscription, commerce, or sponsorship options. They also get to keep their audience data, which includes viewers’ Facebook IDs, names, ages, and locations. OnCam, which employs a facial analytics engine, can also help its customers assess the mood of its aggregated viewing audience.

The startup makes a Facebook application and HTML widget, enabling users to plug their video events into Facebook Pages and websites.

“OnCam will create the most effective, fun, and consumer-friendly way for studios and networks to market to the key demo in a seamless, simple and sharing way. My daughters can now chat with many of their friends at once, discussing school work to television and film shows to ‘One Direction,'” Jason Newman, founding partner of Untitled Entertainment, said in a statement to VentureBeat.

Two-year-old OnCam is based in Huntington Beach and has 25 employees. The startup has raised an undisclosed sum of funding.

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OnCam is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Photo credit: Attila con la cámara/Flickr