Google’s YouTube Snaps Up Video-Making App, Directr

Google has purchased Directr, a mobile video app for businesses and regular people to quickly make videos. The Directr team will be joining YouTube’s video ads division.

Directr’s iOS app was aimed at businesses to help them create, edit and publish promotional videos from a smartphone. The company announced the acquisition on its blog:

Our small band of scrappy film lovers set out 2 years ago to help regular folks make great video. Today, we are incredibly excited to take the next step on that journey and announce that we are joining the video ads team at YouTube.

Under Google, the Directr app will remain available as a separate app, and will now be free.

For now, everything you love about Directr is staying the same and we’ll continue to focus on helping businesses create great video quickly and easily. One immediate bonus: Directr will soon be all free, all the time. Thanks, YouTube!

It seems an Android version may follow if Google opts to keep the going. Though it could decide to make the service available to advertisers only at some point.

The move scoop up the app and the team behind it makes sense. It gives small businesses, in particular, a tool to easily create and promote videos — via AdWords for Video —  on YouTube. While they may not carry the prestige or budgets of large brands, as an aggregate, small businesses have the potential to do a lot to YouTube’s advertising business.

Other recent moves to court small businesses include streamlining YouTube’s ad options and rolling out video ad reporting in Google Analytics.

Image source: Directr

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About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.