Videoplaza Is On A Roll - Moves To London
The Swedish originated video advertising platform Videoplaza is on fire to say the least. We heard news from the company yesterday and they're doing very well. Back in March we wrote about Videoplaza securing a 3.5 million euro financing round to further grow the company. The company has signed a lot of different broadcasters from Europe as its clients and also moved its headquarters to London.
Videoplaza Secures € 3.5 Million In Funding
We all know the Swedish startup Videoplaza has been on a roll lately with their ad serving technology for managing and monetising online video. Venture capitalist are not disagreeing: Today Videoplaza announced the completion of its €3.5 million (US$5 million) round of investment led by Creandum and Northzone.
Not surprisingly, the capital was raised to support a further commercial development and a roll-out across Europe. More specifically, the funding will enable Videoplaza to accelerate the deployment of its Monetizer ad server platform technology for managing, displaying and tracking advertising in and around publishers’ online video content into more European territories, including Germany, Spain and Italy.
Predictions For 2010 - What Are You Betting On?
The year has just turned to 2010 and it's time to do some predicting into the future on the most likely trends this year. While they may not be accurate nor hold true in the end, it's nice to get a feel for what people are predicting. I've got 6 predictions, some not so spectacular, others slightly more outside the possible reach.
The first one is a pretty obvious one based on the recent developments in the media world as well as the startups involved in this industry as well: online video will become a mainstream alternative for advertisers. This does not mean that online video itself will be watched in equally large amounts to regular television, but it will become an alternative and a possibility for advertisers. This essentially means that the industry itself will grow as a business and become an attractive platform for doing business.
Videoplaza Bullish On Future Growth - 'Things are simply taking off'
I talked to Videoplaza founder and CEO Sorosh Tavakoli just last week and Sorosh told me that videoplaza is very bullish on online video monetization. They see that throughout the industry the number of started video streams are up and the number of ads per video are up, on average moving from three to seven. Overall in the video advertising market demand is growing faster than supple and big media companies are waking up to online video.
During our call Tavakoli went on to tell me that Videoplaza could be cashflow positive if they wanted, but they are focusing on growth.
Today Videoplaza walked the talked and put out a blog post where they are looking for no less than 10(!) new employees to recruit before the end of Q1 2010. This is no small announcement in the current economy. The company is clearly scaling up for the storm ahead in 2010.
23 Video Disrupting The Online Video Business
I was recently given a demo of 23 Video, a Danish online service offering a plug and play web-tv platform to set up ones own web-tv channel.
The first thought that crossed my mind during the demo was the feeling of sligth anxiety that occurs when checking out the roaming costs on the phone bill. If not chockingly high, they're usually more than expected. Even though you had checked out the costs in beforehand and were being sensible using your phone abroad.
How come? Because it's the exact same feeling of uncertainty and confusion one often faces when dealing with streaming costs. It already starts with the business offer letter, usually three pages long with no mention of the actual final cost. And that after a meeting with a sales person who's supposed to know your needs and demands by then. Need a video player, too? Call some more people.
23 Video is determined to kill that mumbo jumbo and all talk about difficulties surrounding online streaming and setting up ones own web-tv channel.
Bambuser Picks New CEO From MySpace Nordic
Things are cooking in the Bambuser kitchen. The Swedish live video streaming service has pointed out Hans Eriksson, CEO MySpace Nordic, to take over CEO tourch from Jonas Vig, co-founder and now previous CEO Bambuser.
As I met Måns Adler, founder of Bambuser, this weekend, he was very glad and excited about having Hans onboard, as well as where Bambuser is heading right now. Startups go through different stages and the time has now come to Bambuser to move on to acceleration stage where adding experience to team is a quite natural.
Videofy.me Monetizing Online Video Content
Videofy.me is a Swedish startup enabling online video content publishers to monetize their content. The company was founded in August 2008 by Robert Mellberg and Oskar Glauser, both having their background in Internet communications and advertising. Neither one of them is a huge video blogger but as working in advertising they kept witnessing the fastly growing gap between the online video content on blogsphere and the lack of ad solutions available for the long tail content publishers. Since the release of the first beta for four months ago they've been gaining traction among content publishers.
I stopped by Robert Mellberg, CEO Videofy.me, at their office in central Stockholm to hear how the user-generated online video market is doing and what's on the drawing board.
50 Beta Invites To JayCut's New Online Video Editor
JayCut, the Swedish startup offering online video editing technology, can add another achievement on it's list. They were recently selected as one of this years Red Herring 100 Europe winners. Congrats!
Since we last talked to JayCut, they have been busy developing a new editor. Last weekend I attended a blogger and tech geek event in Sweden's first nuclear reactor R1, and got a demo by Jonas Hombert, the CEO of JayCut.
VideoPlaza Signs Deal With Swedish TV4
Sorosh Tavakoli, the CEO of VideoPlaza, has announced on their blog that they have signed a large advertising deal with the Swedish TV4 -broadcasting company. VideoPlaza is a Swedish video startup offering innovative solutions for online video advertising, be that managing, tracking or displaying video advertisement.
Sorosh wrote that, after talking to some of the British online video producers during his visit to the UK earlier this year, he realised the Swedish TV4 is actually one of the biggest online video players in Europe. He cannot confirm this with official numbers though. The deal is pretty large as it covers all the TV4 domains, and not just the main tv4.se site.
Seems like the video market is on the rise for 2009 as Sorosh Tavakoli stated that there will be more announcements in the coming days.
Online Video Editing And Exporting By JayCut
JayCut, founded in 2007, is a Swedish online video editing startup offering free and simple video editing service.
You can upload unlimited amount of videos and photos in a wide variety of file formats to JayCut's service, and then combine, mix, or trim different clips into one, and add captions and music. You can share the photos, raw video or the finished mixes with friends either using their service, downloading the file to your own computer, iPod, or other device, or sending the files to MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, or your blog. Public videos can also be rated and commented on on their web page. Downloading a file only seems to work in WMV format, and seems to sometimes require some waiting time to get converted before the download can be made. The online service might also be suitable for "open source" film projects like Stray Cinema where people share, re-edit, and mix the raw film footage.
According to some rumors the company has angel financing from London based investors. The business model could be based on including ads in the exported videos, which isn't probably the best alternative, though. Interestingly the company has roots in student entrepreneurship, as they mention nearly all of the founders have been involved in the entrepreneurship association Excitera at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.
VideoPlaza - helping monetize online video
I had a brief chat with Sorosh Tavakoli, the CEO of VideoPlaza - a Stockholm based Swedish startup, about how they are helping to monetize online video. YouTube, among many others, has proved that online video is definitely a big winner in the way people decide to spend their time online. However, as many media companies have shown - the single most important problem remains; how do you monetize this in a proper way?
VideoPlaza set off with this in mind when the company was founded in August 2007. They currently have a licensable platform for serving, managing and presenting ads in online video content. The technologies they use are either Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. They charge their clients with a single startup-fee and a scalable fee based on served ads and bandwidth. VideoPlaza states Kanal5, WarnerBros, Opel, H&M and Arla as their current clients as a proof of big clients approving their products.
Sorosh was in the UK during the European Summer holidays and networking with local agencies and companies working with and around online video. He writes in his latest blog entry that the UK and Swedish market are very much alike and "a lot will happen in the next two years". He also states four dominant charasteristics that pretty much sum up the current immaturity of the market: 1) Pre-roll domination, 2) Confusion on monetization, 3) Lack of ad format standards and 4) Inadequate metrics and reporting.
He doesn't want to reveal too much regarding his plans on UK, but he is currently in talks with several large publishers and I'm sure we're going to hear some news from VideoPlaza during the autumn.
