Video content from 5min includes things as diverse as  recipes, yoga and fitness routines, tech tutorials, DIY projects for home and garden, health videos on specific conditions, beauty and fashion tips, video game walk-throughs, etc. It includes content from over 1,000 of the world’s largest media companies and professional independent video producers, according to AOL. 

"Our acquisition of 5min Media is the latest in a number of steps we have taken this year to better position AOL to capture the growing video opportunity on the Web," said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. "AOL is building a video ecosystem for the next decade. 5min Media is the perfect complement to our powerful video capabilities — it provides a missing piece in the AOL value chain that completes our end-to-end video offering from content creation through syndication and distribution to the consumer experience and monetization."

"AOL and 5min Media share the same excitement about the direction our industry is taking, and our complementary video capabilities make us a compelling fit and an attractive combination for content creators and publishers," said Ran Harnevo, Co-Founder and CEO of 5min Media. "We’ve seen rapid and successful growth as an independent organization and becoming part of AOL is a natural next step. We’re confident that AOL’s organizational horsepower, combined with the vast library, audience and syndication capabilities 5min Media offers, present compelling opportunities for AOL as well as the content creators we work with and the publishers we serve."

AOL has already begun to integrate 5min Media’s video content on its sites through a commercial agreement executed before the acquisition.  "With 5min Media we’ll be able to add more video inventory to our pages. Importantly, we’ll also be able to identify video content holes among our sites, tap our StudioNow capabilities to fill those needs and create a truly ‘demand informed’ video library," said Armstrong.

Finanical terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, though the price has been estimated between $50 million and $65 million.

There are also rumors going around that AOL may be buying technology blog TechCrunch. This would also add to AOL’s content arsenal.

Under the agreement, Scripps whose properties include HGTV and the Food Network, will syndicate its video on 5min. Scripps will also sell advertising on 5min home and food categories. Additionally, 5min will provide videos from its library to Scripps online properties.

Ran Harnevo
CEO of 5min.

The 5min library has more than 100,000 how-to lifestyle videos. By working with 5min, Scripps aims to extend the audience for its online content through contextual distribution across the 5min network of home and food sites. Scripps says the partnership will allow it to increase it s exposure well providing a new source of views and revenue.

"It is increasingly difficult for advertisers to reach large and relevant online audiences in a meaningful way because they are spread across the Web," said Ran Harnevo, CEO of 5min.

"For major media companies like Scripps, 5min’s value is real and immediate because we can extend their reach instantly while providing their advertisers with new avenues for delivering contextually relevant ads to large audiences of engaged online prospects, wherever they are."

Scripps says its partnership with 5min will allow advertisers to reach engaged and targeted audiences. 5min syndicates its short instructional videos to hundreds of sites reaching over 250 million unique monthly visitors.

There isn’t much of a cause-and-effect relationship between those two things, though; the loss was actually caused by a previous group of angel investors.  Michael Arrington writes, “An Israeli (print) magazine called Globes recently got their hands on the capitalization table of 5min and published the details.  The angels ended up with nearly half the company for that $300k, leaving the three founders . . . and all other employees to split the rest.”

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion last October, and more recently, Microsoft gave $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook.  In contrast, $300,000 for half of 5min seems rather unfair.  The fresh $5 million should act as something of a picker-upper, however, and the company’s founders have a couple of other things to be happy about, as well.

First up is the traffic to 5min.com; Frostfirebuzz.com analyzed data from Compete, and the number of people visiting 5min increased by almost 60 percent in the last measurable month.  Also, it appears that the growth (which just started recently) isn’t anywhere close to leveling off.

5min’s founders should also take pride in their product – as opposed to being yet another YouTube clone, 5min tends to focus on skill-teaching and question-answering instructional videos.  It’s more of a resource than a place to watch people get kicked in the crotch.  But only time will tell if these positive attributes can bring in more than $5 million the next time around.