LMSY: A 24/7 video channel anyone can buy a slot on for $5

One channel, running all the time. Buy a play and your spot goes into the six hour block that's already on air, about a minute after you pay. A dollar a minute of runtime, five dollars minimum, because Stripe's flat 30 cents makes anything smaller silly. No sales call, nothing to set up. Every spot that airs gets a page of its own and keeps it. It won't get you reach. Viewership is small and the site says so. Nothing is targeted, and a person watches every spot before it can air.

Every ad platform wants a budget and a campaign and usually a week before your thing actually runs. I wanted to see what airtime looks like if you sell it the way cloud is sold, so I built the smallest version of that.

It's one channel and it doesn't stop. You upload a clip, pay, and it goes into the six hour block that's already on air, roughly a minute later. A dollar a minute of runtime, five dollars minimum. The floor is Stripe's fault, not mine: on a five dollar charge their 2.9% is 14 cents and the flat 30 cents is more than double that, so anything smaller loses almost a tenth of itself just to get collected.

I'm not going to tell you it gets you reach. Viewership is small and the site says so on the page. Nothing is targeted. Every spot gets watched before it airs, and the only reasons to turn one down are illegal or indecent, not off brand.

The bit I didn't expect: a linear channel is the best caching case there is. Everyone wants the same six second segment at the same instant, so the origin serves it once whether ten people are watching or ten thousand. Cost almost stops tracking audience.

Ask me anything, the skeptical questions especially.

@wutlu congratulations on the ph launch.

the "a person watches every spot before it can air" line is doing a lot of work here since it's the whole trust model. curious what that reviewer is actually screening for beyond obviously illegal content - at $5 a slot with no targeting, this reads like it'll attract a lot of low-effort or spammy submissions, so is there a rejection rate you're comfortable sharing, or a refund path when a spot gets pulled after payment

Ask me anything, the skeptical questions especially.

@wutlu congratulations on the ph launch.