• Eyeview Raises Another $15 Million in Hot Video Ad Tech Space

    Video ad tech is a very hot space currently with lots of deals and financings, with the latest being Eyeview, which this morning announced a $15 million financing from existing investor Marker LLC. The new funds bring to $34.5 million the total amount the company has raised.

    Eyeview describes itself as "fusing the effectiveness of TV video branding with the efficiencies of digital personalization." It does this by taking a standard TV ad or other video creative and dynamically customizing it to target individual viewers. The customizations can vary by things like specific advertiser offers, geography, viewer behavior, weather conditions, calendar events, etc. Basically any type of trigger that would help to drive engagement and take the video ad experience far beyond what's typical on TV.

    With these kinds of enhancements, Eyeview has been emphasizing the idea that video ads' measurement should shift to more performance-oriented metrics that are tied to actual purchasing, in-store traffic and lead generation. These metrics were described in a contributed piece to VideoNuze last week by Amit Mashiah, Eyeview's SVP of Strategy and Communications, recapping a recent "Beyond Impressions" event the company hosted.

    When married with programmatic buying, it becomes possible to imagine a vastly different video ad landscape unfolding in which personalized video ads are bought at scale, with the potential to dramatically  improve advertisers' ROI. There are a lot of moving pieces in this vision and it won't happen overnight, but also a lot of momentum behind it.

    Eyeview is clearly driving this and benefiting from it, having hired over 50 new staff in the U.S. in 2014. The company also announced today it has hired Brian Pozesky, previously GM, Media and Analytics at Conversant, as its new CMO, and West Naze, previously EVP, Sales and Technology at News Corp. as Executive Director of CPG Sales.