Diddo is an application programming interface (API) that allows streaming services and other platforms to include shoppable videos. This means that viewers may purchase apparel and accessories for their beloved characters without ever leaving the screen. On Wednesday, the business said that it had secured $2.8 million in initial capital.
In late 2022, Rishi Nair, Ryan Sullivan, and Pamela Chen established Diddo. The moms of Nair and Sullivan, avid viewers of “Selling Sunset,” initiated the company by creating a Google Chrome plugin to mimic the wardrobe choices of their favorite reality TV personalities. And now they’ve built an API that can spot items in movies and TV programs using their own AI computer vision technology. If a product, like Kim Kardashian’s $700 Balenciaga T-shirt, is too expensive, the AI will also recommend similar items so that customers may purchase them at a reduced price.
Link Ventures led the fundraising round, which included an unidentified Disney executive, Neo, Dante D’Angelo of Valentino, Erica Lockheimer of LinkedIn, Camille Ricketts of Notion, and Scott Forstall, renowned for managing the Apple team that developed iOS.
The extra financing will expand the company’s eight-person staff and support product development. Rob Sussman, who is also a stakeholder in Diddo, is the new chief operating officer. Sussman was previously Sundance’s chief financial officer and MGM+’s executive vice president (formerly Epix).
Dailymotion, Mux, the Highlights App, PlayersOnly (a social sports platform), The Big Picture (a collective for cinema and television), Blair New York (a fashion brand), and a dozen more firms have struck arrangements with Diddo so far. Aside from that, the business was clean about its ongoing negotiations with streaming giants Hulu and others.
Diddo asserts that their API stands out from the competition because it integrates its computer vision technology with a platform’s video player.
“As far as we know, no other company is doing it,” Nair said to Eltrys. It is unnecessary for these businesses to transmit their video outside of their own environment. Because these media firms consider it a dead end if they have to transmit their video outside of the API in order to run the computer vision, that’s a major issue. To get from video intake to commerce capabilities without leaving, we’ve figured out how to establish our computer vision inside their video environment.
The problem, according to Nair, is that it is “incredibly tolling on the end user’s device” to run computer vision over a film that millions of people are seeing at the same time. To avoid this problem, we have chosen to use a time-stamped method of product documentation. The idea is to run the computer vision program through the video once, and it will find all the items in it and add them to a database with a time stamp. With on-demand content, there’s no need for the streamer or end user to do anything; all that’s required is a single run on our end.
In addition, unlike Peacock’s Must ShopTV feature, which requires QR codes, and unlike Roku’s shoppable commercials, which offer items as invasive advertisements, this solution does not remove viewers from the watching experience.
Even after the show has ended, viewers of Diddo may peruse the whole inventory in an interactive shop. They go on to pay for it using the built-in checkout feature, which works with all the main e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and Salesforce Cloud. Diddo also keeps track of user interests.
Purchases made on the Diddo platform incur a 4% to 6% charge.
The latest investment round coincides with Paramount’s partnership with Shopsense AI, an artificial intelligence-powered shoppable system. On April 7, the streamer unveiled its new mobile shopping platform. Freevee and Amazon Prime Video launched a new ad-supported channel for shoppable livestreams last week.
