Wootag lets viewers buy and interact with brands inside videos, targets Southeast Asia

Video advertising is reshaping Southeast Asia’s media landscape with increased internet connectivity, a higher demand for choice and control, and an overall growing consumption of online video content, according to a recent Nielsen report. This is good news for Raj Sunder, founder and CEO of Wootag, a video engagement product that lets viewers make purchases and interact with brands inside the video they’re watching.

“Wootag is built for brands, businesses, startups, and even individuals. It is awesome as anyone can jump right in and start creating more interactive content,” explains Sunder. “It also shifts the function of videos away from users as mere spectators, and allows for a two-way interaction between viewers and content creators. Rather than just allowing viewers to comment on your video, viewers can potentially alter the viewing experience based on their interaction with the video.”

The implications for a product like Wootag in Southeast Asia are significant, especially when considering all the ways in which it could be applied to Indonesia’s flourishing ecommerce space. Sunder previously spent more than 14 years as a developer, serving Indian and Indonesian corporations like Tata, Virgin Mobile, and Bakrie Group. According to him, the product also helps with lead-generation, and can even calculate a user’s ROI for their marketing effort with Wootag.

See: 3 services for you to stream movies in Indonesia

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Sunder made a demo of Wootag for Tech in Asia using our Startup Asia promotional video from last year’s Singapore conference (a shameless plug that we will humbly accept!). Sunder made it so viewers can sign up for Bootstrap Alley, join our global platform for Asian startups and global investors Techlist, and even purchase discounted tickets to Startup Asia. Sunder also says he’s giving away a 15-day free Wootag trial to all Tech in Asia readers who use the promo code: TIA.

(Note: This is not an endorsement from Tech in Asia)

At certain points in the video, creators have the ability to insert a translucent dot that appears on-screen to indicate that the item it’s hovering over is important. The video will then offer up an icon at the bottom of the video to let users make some kind of decision. These calls-to-action can be anything from simply inputting an email address to actually buying an item they see in the video. Sunder highlights the utility this can present to the fashion industry, for example, viewers can now purchase the clothes “right off the model’s back,” so to speak.

Market potential for all-in-one audience engagement

In Asia Pacific the market for video advertising is around US$4 billion and Southeast Asia accounts for 10 to 15 percent of that, says Sunder. He adds that video spending in the region has also increased by around 23 percent year-over-year in less than a decade.

Sunder says Wootag launched in December and has so far received 1,700 unique visitors with a seven percent conversion rate for new signups. He didn’t give an exact figure on how many paying customers Wootag currently has, but he did say that 70 percent of subscribers have created at least one interactive video with the product. Wootag mainly competes with US companies like Innvoid and TubeMogul, which focus on video ad-serving. According to Sunder, it also sees competition in the form of a company called Redirections, which also provides tools for making interactive videos.