Videoplaza Secures $12 Million Series B
Videoplaza has just come out with an announcement that they have secured a $12 million investment aimed for global expansion. The Series B funding comes from Qualcomm Ventures and Innovacom. We've written about the Sweden based company before as well, regarding their strong growth. With this investment the growth is sure to follow. The company had a great 2011 according to the press release. It served five times greater ad volume than the year before and opened up new offices in Madrid, Berlin and Singapore. It now operates in 17 different countries.
Saul Klein On What Companies In The Nordics Make More Than $10 Million Annually
Quora has become a great source of information for entrepreneurs, and pretty much anyone interested in a specific topic. In short, Quora is a well executed question and answer service that is currently in beta. WIth this, they've been able to choose who they want to let in while this in turn has helped them keep the quality of the answers very high. Another interesting aspect of the service that startups should take notice of, is the people they've managed to get on board. You can find lots of famous startup CEOs there answering questions and helping people understand more about their companies. Enough about Quora though. There was an interesting question in Quora regarding which Nordic companies make more than $10 million annually and Saul Klein had answered it. He answered a similar question about companies based in London that interested a lot of people, so it's definitely interesting to look into this as well.
Summary Of 2010 On ArcticStartup
Despite creating more clutter with yet another trend post for this year, I think it's worth looking back at some of the most read stories and biggest trends we've covered this year on ArcticStartup. Some of the most read stories are around Rovio, Nokia and Valkee. The most read stories this year were 7 Ways Nokia Can Win Again as well as Oh, Noes! Not Another Ex-Insiders Thoughts On Nokia! (Part I). Both of the stories received a lot of traffic from Finnish national press and thus were clearly the most visited stories in terms of page view.
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.
Entrepreneurship Forum Panel On Monetizing Digital Content
ArcticStartup with its passion for entrepreneurship is media partnering with the Entrepreneurship Forum in Stockholm, Sweden. The Entrepreneurship Forum initiative, co-founded by Daniel Blomquist at Creandum, aims to promote entrepreneurship and create a meeting place for everyone (students, entrepreneurs, investors) interested in entrepreneurship.
The topic at this second annual event is How to Monetize Digital Content and they've got a really interesting set up for panel including absolute top players pushing the new Internet economy forward.
Henrik Torstensson (SVP Stardoll and General Manager Piczo), Sorosh Tavakoli (CEO Videoplaza) and Ted Valentin (annonskartan, sushikartan etc.).
More reading on Stardoll, Videoplaza and Ted Valentin here at ArcticStartup.
Ville is coming over to moderate the panel so get ready for some good time and great insights!
See you there!
Videoplaza Trying To Do The Impossible And Monetize Online Video
Yesterday Videoplaza, a Swedish startup focusing on video advertising solutions, announced that the four of the largest print publishers in Denmark, Berlingske Media , Ekstra Bladet, Jyllands Posten and Børsen and 4 big advertisers, De Gule Sider, Nordisk Film, Nykredit and SAS, have come together to kickstart the online video advertising market in Denmark. (Read the story in VideoPlaza blog here).
Online video advertising has been coming for years, but has never really arrived. At least not yet. Similarly it's not an overstatment to say that most of the content creators, namely news medias, are fighthing what many see as a losing battle to stay alive. Videoplaza has taken a small step closer to solving their biggest problem, how to make money with content online, by monetising online videos through prerolls, overlays and companion banners. However, Videoplaza founder and CEO, Sorosh Tavakoli, admits it's not as easy as it might look. Actually it's damn hard. Here's a story he shared with us:
Are Telecom Providers Finally Becoming Service Aggregators?
ZilliongTV, a Sunnyvale, California based startup, is trying what everybody is talking about. They are trying to build a working model for viewing movies and TV programs over the Internet on demand. Instead of the traditional push, a functioning model for pull. There is already one, Hulu, but Hulu is very(!) much an extension of the big content owners who own the movies and does not work outside the US for this very reason. ZillionTV would be a step towards away from them, even if a small one. In effect, ZillionTV mixes Spotify, Videoplaza and Blyk models.
Just as with Spotify, ZillionTV has partnered with big content owners who are trying figure out how to monetize their content with poor results. What Spotify does for music, ZillionTV tries to do for moviews and TV programs. The vision is nothing short of Spotify's neither: To secure all the content that's ever been made in the world. Unlike many others in the IPTV industry, ZillionTV has also something to show as they have some really big companies already onboard (Warner, Universal, Fox and Disney).
Videoplaza Gaining Speed
Recently we wrote about Videoplaza signing a deal with Sweden's TV4. At that point it was not disclosed what they would deliver to TV4. Now Videoplaza has revealed that they work together with TV4 on Replay, a free ad funded catch-up service, which uses Videoplaza's ad server to serve ads. The formats the ads are served to the TV include pre- and midrolls, overlays and companion banners. Campaigns currently running include campaigns from Sweden’s largest advertiser ICA, Ford, SAS and the Red Cross. (see video below in Swedish).
This could also possibly be something that could easily take traction in other Nordic countries as they struggle find new ways to compete against new players like TVkaista (see our blog post here). Not only that, I believe UK and the whole mainland Europe is potentially fertile ground for their solution, where US might be a tougher market with Hulu and the likes.
The company also announced that it has added a new board member, Rolf Skoglund, who started Microsoft Nordics way back in 1985. At the same time Videoplaza announced two advisors: Andy Chen, VP of Digital Solutions at Viacom International / MTV Europe and Joakim Jardenberg, the CEO of Mindpark. All of Videoplaza's non-execs are also investors and stake holders in the company.
Creandum, an independent and partner owned Swedish early stage seed fund which has invested in Spotify has also invested in Videoplaza. We will see if Videoplaza will spark similar kind of wild speculation that Spotify has. Creandum's portfolio includes a number of very promising Nordic early stage companies along with Spotify, and it is likely that Videoplaza is no exception.
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.
Meet Four Swedish Startups In London Today
Anders Fredriksson of Tablefinder fame has organized a trip to London with some Swedish startups that are today presenting at minibar, London.
The Swedish startups are looking to share expertise, learn from London startups, and meet great contacts. The startups in London are:
Videoplaza.com - An ad server for video - they help companies monetize online video.
Jaycut.com - Online video editing - named best entertainment website in Sweden 2007
Bambuser.com - Live broadcasting from mobile phones and webcams - recently received venture backing by a Norwegian firm. (The best bit is that you can get a link send to your Jaiku and Twitter account when you are broadcasting so your friend can go see what you're up to)
Moyu.me - Instant picture messenger - early startup that just launched their service.
I personally instantly fell in love with Bambuser and Jaycut. I already tried Bambuser and it appear to work nicely, although there is a quite a time lag between the time you record it and when the link appear on your Jaiku or Twitter feed to notify your friend.
If you'd like to meet them Anders told me that he'd be happy to meet up. Contact Anders via Twitter (here) with invitations or meet them at the Minibar London at 6pm if you're already planning on going.
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.
