Posts for 'Deals & Financings'

A viewer finds an online video, clicks play and increasingly, expects a TV-like experience. Hundreds of millions of times per day around the world, this sequence of events happens, and it's only growing in frequency. While surging demand is great for the overall ecosystem, network providers / broadband ISPs are continually struggling to keep up with spiraling traffic, pressed to invest in their networks to create more capacity while still maintaining a strong ROI.

Therefore, any incremental improvement in networks' efficiency in delivering video traffic can quickly add up to huge cost savings, and that's exactly what Qwilt, which has raised another $16 million (led by Bessemer Venture Partners and bringing to $40 million total raised to date), does. Qwilt is in the "transparent caching" business, with networks deploying the company's  software solution on off-the-shelf hardware at the edge of their networks to deliver the thin slice of most-frequently viewed video to their users.

continue reading

Last Friday afternoon, Hulu's owners Disney, Fox and NBCU/Comcast (note NBCU/Comcast is a passive owner) announced that they wouldn't be selling Hulu, despite an active bidding process. Instead, the companies will retain their interests and plan to invest $750 million in Hulu to grow it. Although the principal reason for the sale was a disagreement over Hulu's business strategy, the announcement said Fox and Disney are "fully aligned in our collective vision and goals for the business (although what they actually are were not disclosed).

This was the second time a Hulu sale failed to materialize and I believe that once again, the reason was that Hulu's owners realized "you can't have your cake and eat it too." Translation: Disney and Fox wanted to retain all kinds of content rights and flexibility, yet still wanted a very high valuation for the business. Since Hulu's next-day broadcast rights are at the core of its valuation, Disney and Fox's attempt to chip away at them led bidders to reduce what they were willing to pay, obviously beyond the level at which Fox and Disney felt it was still worthwhile selling the business.

continue reading

I'm pleased to present the 187th edition of the VideoNuze weekly podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. During the short July 4th week news broke that Samsung acquired Boxee. Today, we discuss whether the deal makes sense and how much Samsung could benefit. Colin believes that Samsung will benefit by being able to integrate live broadcast TV more seamlessly into its Smart TVs, something that has been missing to date, but which Boxee excelled at with its Boxee TV service.

While that would be a step forward, it feels to me like a relatively limited value proposition, since cable TV networks wouldn't be included unless a CableCARD slot was available. Even as a second TV in the home as Colin proposes, a Samsung/Boxee Smart TV seems like it would have limited appeal, due to the rise of tablet-based viewing and the ability to access broadcast TV via Hulu, network sites/apps, pay-TV operator apps, etc. (a larger question raised is whether 2nd TVs have much of a future themselves).

While Colin and I agree that the rumored $30 million purchase price for Boxee is a drop in the bucket for a goliath like Samsung, it's not clear yet how much of a return they'll get.

Listen in to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (19 minutes, 52 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!

Final bidding was scheduled to close last Friday in the Hulu sale process, with the list of potential buyers apparently narrowed to DirecTV, Chernin Group/AT&T and Guggenheim Digital Media. According to various reports (here and here), Hulu's active owners Disney and Fox (Comcast is a passive owner) have been insisting on a number of content licensing related deal points.

Hulu's next-day access to its 3 broadcast owners' hit shows has always been the heart of the company's value proposition. But a lot has changed in the online video landscape since Hulu was initially formed in March, 2007. As a result, in my view, there are at least 3 key reasons Hulu's owners are justified in bargaining hard over content licensing rights: the importance of TV Everywhere, the growth of well-funded over-the-top licensees and the potential of online video advertising. Following, I delve into each.

continue reading

Innovid has raised an $11 million series C round from existing investors Sequioa Capital, Genesis Partners and T-Ventures, along with new investor Vintage Investment Partners. With the new round, the company has raised $27.6 million to date. Innovid CEO and co-founder Zvika Netter told me the company experienced a very strong Q3 and Q4 in 2012, contributing to 450% year-over-year growth. The new financing will help the company expand its ad platform beyond online, mobile and tablet to also reach connected TVs, game consoles, VOD and broadcast.

Innovid's technology platform allows advertisers to integrate interactive elements into their pre-roll video ads, increasingly the likelihood of engagement and improving ROI. As Innovid's iRoll gallery shows, these can include social sharing, links to mini-sites, special offers/commerce, supplementary content, etc. Interactivity is added to the ads easily through the iRoll Studio. Innovid also offers ad serving and advanced analytics that track exactly how users engage with the interactive elements.

continue reading

Taboola has raised another $15 million, led by Pitango VC, bringing its total to date to $40 million. The Series D financing comes just 9 months after raising its last round of $10 million. Taboola will use the new funds for continued international expansion and product development. CEO and founder Adam Singolda told me the company has 70 employees currently and plans to double in size by the end of 2013.

Taboola's roots are in providing recommendations for content providers to better promote their own video within their sites and also for third-party video to gain wider, targeted distribution. Over the past year Taboola has also leveraged its underlying EngageRank recommendations technology to quietly begin distributing article recommendations as well (I noticed these last month on WSJ.com).

continue reading

Anyone working in or around the video ad tech space knows how incredibly crowded and well-funded it is. So, when a couple of weeks ago I noticed that a company I was only mildly familiar with, Altitude Digital, announced it had raised $5 million, I was intrigued. While not a blockbuster-sized round, financings of this size signal that the investors, after having done their customary due diligence, see some "white space" still available to operate in.  To learn more, I recently spoke to Devin Yeager, Altitude's COO, and Joe Salvador, VP of Video Operations.

Denver-based Altitude started up about 4 years ago as a display ad rep firm, but 2 years ago began building its own technology. More recently, Altitude has expanded into video, creating a new division called Visualtising. As a whole, the company is now processing about 12 billion display and video ad impressions per month. Altitude currently has 20 employees and is looking to double in size this year. It was also #54 ranked on Inc. 5000 list last year. Expanding Visualtising is the main purpose of the new financing.

continue reading

Welcome to 2013! If you were mostly checked out over the past 1-2 weeks (or were only paying attention to the fiscal cliff roller coaster), you didn't miss a whole lot in the video world. However, there were 5 items that caught my attention which I briefly describe below:

See the 5 items

It may be a fool's errand to question the thinking of an investor who's worth $14 billion, but after listening to Bloomberg's interview with Carl Icahn yesterday (embedded below) concerning his newly disclosed 10% stake in Netflix, it's hard not to conclude his understanding of the company is a mile wide and an inch deep. Unless he has some big vision for the company up his sleeve that he's not disclosing, Icahn seems more interested in a short-term bet on driving Netflix into a larger company's arms, than in positively influencing Netflix's murky strategic direction.

continue reading

RAMP, which helps media companies optimize video discovery, has raised a $15 million Series C round, led by StarVest Partners, plus new investors Hearst Interactive Media and EDBI and including existing investors. With the financing, RAMP has raised $40 million to date. Funds are intended to pursue the enterprise market and also for international expansion.

continue reading

Visible Measures, which provides video analytics and operates the Viewable Media video ad network, has raised another $21.5 million, led by DAG Ventures and including existing investors. The funds will be used to drive adoption of the company's products.

Visible Measures' CEO Brian Shin said that the company will achieve 300% revenue growth in 2012, for the second year in a row. That strong growth is aided by the April, 2011 launch of Viewable Media, the company's video ad network that is based on its core analytics platform. Viewable Media differentiates itself as performance-based and positions video ads as content that users can choose from on publishers' web pages. The company said that over one hundred brands and agencies have adopted Viewable Media since launch.

continue reading

Video recommendations provider Taboola has announced a $10 million Series C financing this morning led by Marker LLC. With the new round, total capital raised to date is $24 million. Proceeds will be used for international expansion and product development.

Taboola's EngageRank now delivers 500 million recommendations per day to 130 million monthly users for publishers such as WSJ, NY Times, CNN, The Hollywood Reporter, USA Today and others. Monthly users have doubled since last November, when Taboola had 64 million users in the U.S. User growth likely reflects increased penetration with U.S. publishers, and also international growth in countries such as Germany (where Taboola recently announced a deal with OMS, a consortium of 30 newspapers), England, Israel, Brazil, France and Poland.

continue reading

This week, Avail-TVN made a big splash at the Cable Show, announcing a $100 million financing from The Carlyle Group and the acquisition of the UK-based On Demand Group. As CEO Ramu Potarazu tells me in this interview, Avail-TVN isn't a household name, but it has become one of the most important players in distributing digital video globally. Ramu describes how complex the landscape has become for both content providers and service providers on the other and what roles Avail-TV has in the digital video value chain. He also touches on the disruption that is coming to the digital video advertising space due to dynamic insertion. Watch the video (8 minutes, 35 seconds).

Watch the video

Elemental Technologies, which has developed an innovative GPU-based video processing technology, has raised a $13 million Series C round led by Norwest Venture Partners, to fund international and product expansion. Total financing raised to date is $29.6 million. Elemental's CEO and co-founder Sam Blackman told me yesterday that the company racked up "8-digits" in revenues last year, up from "7-digits" in the two prior years, and has been close to being cash flow positive for the last couple of quarters.

continue reading

Mediamorph, a cloud-based service which tracks and measures all digital assets across all digital platforms, has raised an additional $8 million, from Smedvig Capital and Motorola Mobility. Co-founder and Chairman Shahid Khan told me that the funding will be used primarily to expand into Europe and to strengthen its range of service offerings. Total funding raised to date is $11 million.

Mediamorph addresses a key pain point for content providers: as digital distribution platforms multiply, there is massive complexity in cohesively tracking and measuring viewership by platform and then determining the compensation due per contractual terms. Shahid said the company now has relationships with 350 different distributors from which it receives usage data on behalf of content provider clients such as Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, HBO, Starz and others. Mediamorph accepts either structured or unstructured data, crunches it, and then provides a cloud-based, customizable dashboard so that clients can see exactly how their assets are performing either as a whole, or with specific outlets like iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, etc.

continue reading

Video stream optimization and analytics provider Conviva has raised a $15 million Series D round, led by Time Warner Investments. With the financing, Conviva has raised $59 million to date. The new funding is earmarked for international expansion and headcount growth.

Conviva's client-side software takes the "pulse" of video streams, and depending on problems detected, will preemptively modify the stream's bit rate and its source, switching CDNs on the fly. The result is a much-improved user experience.  Content providers are able to use the Conviva dashboard to analyze delivery, playback and of their video, along with viewer engagement.  Conviva optimizes streams for Time Warner divisions HBO and Turner Broadcasting, among other customers including ESPN, Netflix, Fox, NBCU and others. In total, Conviva is optimizing over 1 billion streams per month.

continue reading