Diddo is an API for streaming services and other platforms to integrate shoppable videos, allowing consumers to purchase clothing and accessories featuring their favorite characters directly on their screen. The company announced Wednesday that it had raised $2.8 million in seed funding.
Diddo was founded in late 2022 by Rishi Nair, Ryan Sullivan, and Pamela Chen for Nair and Sullivan's mother, who is a fan of “Selling Sunset” and wants to dress like her favorite reality TV star. It started as a Google Chrome extension built on . Now, the company has developed an API that uses proprietary computer vision AI technology to identify products in TV shows and movies. The AI also extracts comparable items, so shoppers can buy a lower-priced camo if, for example, Kim Kardashian's $700 Balenciaga T-shirt is out of their price range. It will be.
The funding round was led by Link Ventures and was funded by Neo, Dante D'Angelo (Valentino), Erica Lockheimer (LinkedIn), anonymous Disney executive Camille Ricketts (former CMO of Notion), and the developer of iOS, among others. I lead the Apple team.
The new capital will support product development and expand the company's eight-person team. The company recently hired Rob Sussman (also a Diddo investor) as his COO. He is a former Sundance CFO and executive vice president of MGM+ (formerly Epix).
Diddo has signed deals with 12 companies so far, including Dailymotion, Mux, Highlights App, social sports platform PlayersOnly, film and TV collective The Big Picture, and fashion brand Blair New York. The company also revealed that it is in active negotiations with Hulu and another streaming giant.
Image credit: didu
Diddo says the computer vision technology built into the platform's video player makes its API stand out from its competitors.
“So far we're the only company doing this,” Nair told TechCrunch. “These companies don't need to send video outside of their ecosystem. This is a big deal because all these media companies [think] If you need to send video outside of the API to do computer vision, it's not a starter. So what we've figured out is that we can set up our computer vision within the video ecosystem so that we can move completely from video ingestion to commerce functionality without having to leave. ”
One of the challenges with this, however, is that running computer vision on video that is being watched by millions of users simultaneously is “incredibly taxing on the end user's device.” says Nair. “To get around this issue, we decided to build our product with an approach that timestamps it when documenting it. This allows us to run computer vision once on the video, and We identify all products and store them in a time-stamped database, so we don't change any products in our on-demand content, so we only need to do it once on our end, and we don't require anything from the streamer or end user. .”
Image credit: didu
Additionally, QR codes aren't required (like Peacock's Must ShopTV feature), products aren't displayed as intrusive ads (see Roku's shoppable ads), and users aren't removed from the viewing experience.
With Diddo, you can browse all products in an interactive storefront after the episode ends. Then complete your purchase through the native checkout functionality. This includes integrations with major e-commerce services such as Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and Salesforce Cloud. Diddo also collects user data about which products you are interested in and recommends similar products in the future.
Diddo collects a commission of 4% to 6% on all purchases made on its platform.
The recent funding round follows Paramount's partnership with AI-powered shoppable technology Shopsense AI. The streamer debuted his new mobile shopping experience on April 7th. Last week, Amazon's Prime Video and Freevee released ad-supported free channels for shoppable live streams.