Vimeo Hires Top News Corp. Executive to Build Its VOD Store

Greg Clayman was the publisher of News Corp.’s short-lived iPad publication The Daily

Vimeo has hired Greg Clayman, a high-ranking News Corp. executive and one-time publisher of The Daily, the company plans to announce Monday.

Clayman’s official title at Vimeo will be general manager of Audience Networks, and a big part of his job will be to build out the site’s nascent on-demand service. Vimeo launched the service at South by Southwest, and has spent the past several months trying to convince top creators to sell their movies on the site.

They can choose how much they want to charge and keep 90 percent of sales. Clayman will acquire new movies and videos for Vimeo On Demand, develop different payment  options — buying, renting and others — and try to forge partnerships.

Also read: Paradigm Partners with LittleCast to Help Stars Sell Videos on Facebook (Exclusive)

Clayman most recently served as an EVP at News Corp., but the former MTV executive is best known for helping to launch The Daily, the short-lived iPad-only publication.

He faces another uphill challenge with Vimeo. The site draws more than 90 million unique visitors a month for its free videos, and has millions of Vimeo Pro subscribers as well.

However, video-on-demand has had a rough few months with the recent layoffs at Chill, and complaints about a lack of transparency from larger distributors.

Also read: Chill to Lay Off 40% of Staff, Move Away From Video Sales (Exclusive)

For Vimeo to persuade users that they need to come to its site as often as they do iTunes or Netflix, it needs to draw some movies that millions of people will pay to see — and convince a filmmaker to pick Vimeo as their first stop.

Enter Clayman.

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