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Innovid Raises $9.5 Million to Fuel Interactive Video Ads
Innovid, whose iRoll interactive pre-roll ad unit delivers a higher ROI for advertisers and publishers, is announcing a $9.5 million Series B financing led by
Sequoia Capital, with participation from current investors Genesis Capital and T-Venture. The new funds will help fuel global expansion. Innovid is Sequoia's first investment in the video advertising space. Innovid raised a $4 million first round in September, 2010.
Innovid is now integrated with every U.S. video ad network and 2,100 sites are iRoll certified. iRoll allows advertisers to reach viewers with a limitless array of engagement opportunities, far beyond what standard pre-rolls can offer (a gallery of examples is here). These can include social media sharing, shopping opportunities and localized information, among others. Innovid has also introduced DYNAMO, an ad serving and analytics platform that works with all pre-roll ads and can also measure and report all interactions with iRoll ads.
Categories: Advertising, Deals & Financings
Topics: Innovid, Sequoia Capital
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For Hulu, Flat Viewership But Better Monetization During Past Year
As prospective bidders for Hulu have assessed its value, two of the key things they have no doubt focused on are the site's viewership metrics and monetization. If comScore data for Hulu for the past year is a good proxy, then bidders have likely observed that Hulu's monthly viewership has stayed within a pretty tight range. Meanwhile, monetization has improved, but has also stayed pretty consistent since a step up in Q4 '10. Below are three charts I've created from comScore's data that illustrate these points.
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In-Stream Mobile Video Ad Completion Rates Running Strong
In-stream mobile video ad completion rates are running strong according to new data that mobile video ad network Rhythm NewMedia has shared with me. According to their data, completion rates for pre-roll and mid-roll ads in Q2 '11 averaged 87%, consistent with the prior 5 quarters. The ads viewed are mostly 15 seconds in duration.
Rhythm also reported that a total of just over 6 ads are viewed during full length episodes from premium content partners TV.com, The CW, Crackle and others. Typically there is one ad per break. In addition, total content views grew 200% from Q1 '11 to Q2 '11. Mobile devices include iOS and Android, with 60% of views delivered over WiFi networks.
Categories: Advertising, Mobile Video
Topics: Rhythm NewMedia
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Digital Movie Purchase and Rental Activity Remains Anemic
Earlier this week IHS Screen Digest Media Research released market share information for the top 5 U.S. digital/online movie stores for the first half of 2011, which together represent approximately 96% of the market. In addition, IHS released information on revenues generated for both purchase/download (Electronic sell-through or "EST") and rental (Internet video on demand or "iVOD").
In the chart below, I've taken the IHS data a step further to estimate each of the top 5 stores' revenues and transaction volume from EST and iVOD (note IHS only provides combined EST+iVOD market share information so for simplicity I have assumed each individual store's share is the same for both EST and iVOD though no doubt there are some variations). The data leads to a clear conclusion that years after movies have been available for digital purchase/download and rental, activity remains anemic, suggesting very low levels of consumer interest, particularly as compared with DVD purchase or rental/subscription options.
Categories: Aggregators, Commerce, FIlms
Topics: Amazon, IHS, iTunes, Microsoft, Sony, VUDU, Wal-Mart
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Brightcove Files $50 Million IPO, Investors Get A Rare Pure-Play Opportunity in White-Hot Online Video Space
Cloud-based video platform provider Brightcove has filed to raise up to $50 million in an initial public offering (IPO). Rumors of an IPO have floated
around Brightcove almost since the company's inception 7 years ago, but gained steam in the last year as the company hired Chris Menard as its CFO (who previously served as CFO of publicly-traded Phase Forward). Given the choppiness in the public markets, it's not clear when the offering will occur, but when it does Brightcove will give investors a rare pure-play investment opportunity in the white-hot online video space.
Brightcove's S-1 reveals the company has nearly 3,300 customers in 50+ countries, including The New York Times Company, Oracle, Showtime, Philips Electronics and Macy's. Revenue in the first 6 months of 2011 were $28.4 million, up from $20.3 million in the first 6 months of 2010. Brightcove's net loss was $17.8 million in 2010 and $9.7 million in the first 6 months of 2011. The company has raised nearly $100 million to date and cash on-hand exceeded $24 million on June 30th.
Categories: Deals & Financings
Topics: Brightcove
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KODAK Gallery Launches Animoto's Video Slideshow Creator
KODAK Gallery, which has 75 million users, has begun offering Animoto's video slideshow creator via an API, enabling users to build their own slideshows within the KODAK site. For those not familiar with Animoto (which recently raised $25 million), its service allows users to upload photos, short video clips and music which are then packaged into slick video slideshows. Animoto's CEO and co-founder Brad Jefferson gave me a quick overview of the partnership and a company update yesterday.
The KODAK Gallery partnership (which was originally announced in last March and is Animoto's largest to date), addresses a key challenge for Animoto of how to attract new users to create video slideshows. As Brad explained, reducing the time required to seeing a slideshow or preview is a key objective, and since users have by definition already uploaded photos to the KODAK Gallery, they have a head-start. KODAK Gallery users just need to pick an album and a song and Animoto creates a 30-second slideshow preview which can be expanded into longer versions.
Categories: Partnerships, Technology
Topics: Animoto, KODAK Galler
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comScore: VEVO is Top YouTube Partner Channel By Far
Music video site VEVO attracted nearly 60 million unique viewers and generated over 844 million videos viewed to its YouTube partner channel in July, making it by far the most popular YouTube partner channel, according to new data released by comScore.
comScore has recently begun measuring traffic for a select number of YouTube partners. As the chart below shows, Warner Music's channel was second in unique viewers with 31 million+, while Machinima's was second in videos viewed with 265 million+. From its inception, YouTube has been providing technology to VEVO, which was founded by Sony, Universal and Abu Dhabi Media, with EMI licensing its music videos.
Categories: Aggregators, Music
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Expensive Regional Sports Networks Are Becoming Pay-TV's Achilles Heel
An article in the NY Times over the weekend, "Regional Sports Networks Show the Money," highlighted the mega-profitable and symbiotic relationship between marquee sports teams/conferences and the regional sports networks (RSNs) they have spawned. RSNs aren't new, but as the article pointed out, teams and conferences are getting increasingly creative and aggressive about their TV rights, in turn driving up the fees pay-TV operators and ultimately subscribers are required to pay. All of this suggests that RSNs are becoming pay-TV's Achilles Heel especially when it comes to non-sports fans.
This is a topic I covered back in January, in "Not a Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year" and subsequently in "Time Warner Cable-LA Lakers Deal Is More Bad News For Pay-TV's Non-Sports Fans," in each case noting that as sports programming fees drive pay-TV rates ever higher, some portion of non-sports fans will eventually defect for lower-cost entertainment-centric options (e.g. Netflix, Hulu, over-the-air/ antenna reception, etc.).
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Satellite, Sports, Telcos
Topics: LA Dodgers, LA Lakers, Pac-12, RSNs
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