VideoPlaza Gets €3.5 Million To Expand European Video Ad Service

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VideoPlaza Gets €3.5 Million To Expand European Video Ad Service

Web video ads and analytics provider VideoPlaza of Stockholm is taking a €3.5 million first proper funding round to solidify its European efforts.

The outfit can place ads of various formats in online videos powered by 15 different video platforms, and then offers metrics to help advertisers plan and understand campaigns.

VideoPlaza got nearly €500,000 in seed funding from Creandum and angels back in July 2008 and, CEO Sorosh Tavakoli tells me, broke even in December…

“That proved the business worked in a smaller size - now we’re raising money to do the same on a larger scale,” he says. The new funding from Northzone means VideoPlaza now has both of Spotify’s original institutional investors on board.

So far, VideoPlaza has 25 paying clients in seven European and Scandinavian markets, including broadcasters TV4 and Kanal5 at home in Sweden. Brightcove is a key partner, but there are problems getting to plug in with YouTube. It has staff in Stockholm, London and Paris and recently hired a southern Europe director based in London. Tavakoli says Germany is the next step before he settles to concentrate on existing markets.

So far, it customers are mainly Scandinavian, so it needs to break out, but it does place ads in Incisive Media and Factory Media videos, as well as in some licensed by Myvideorights. But don’t expect American expansion with this funding: “The U.S. is a non-focus area - we turn down business there.”

Online video has reached a point where growing adoption is presenting a fast-moving advertiser opportunity - and an accompanying rush from advertising and metrics vendors. But online video advertising is going large just at the same time content owners in some other media sectors run away from advertising as a sole funding avenue.

Here’s Beet.tv’s Andy Plesser interviewing Tavakoli at a recent roundtable Andy and I co-chaired at The Guardian…

Robert Andrews

@robertandrews Mar 18, 2010 4:00 AM ET

Posted In: Advertising, Media & Publishing, TV, VOD, Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Venture Capital

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Cynthia Brumfield

Philip,

I agree with you entirely about the wholesale parrotting of this Forrester report. Over at my blog, IP Democracy, I did indeed look critically (see http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/002485will_free_or_feebased_web_video_prevail.php) at the claims of the study and concluded that both free and fee-based content downloads have a future.

The report was intentionally ham-handed to generate the press coverage it has. That's just the nature of the market research beast.

Matt

Methinks thou dost protest too much. Didn't Forrester also predict the market wouldn't pay per download of songs? Of course if you wait long enough - even decades - you can always point a finger somewhere to say "see, we were right".

Hmmm….I find it suspect if not downright goofy to be so certain of such a prediction. What do I believe? I think you'll see a lot more splitskies. Meaning, for certain kinds of content on certain kinds of platforms pay per download will work. For others, it'll be all ad based baby. When will these tired old school research firms quit pretending they've got some frigging crystal ball? Oh yea, because they have to sound like they know what they're talking about to the old school media outlets who pay them to say what they already believe. Gimme some sugar daddy, I'z gots to go powder my nose.

Philip Hodgetts

Why won't anyone comment on the claims instead of reporting them as if they were fact? Surely someone with some journalistic integrity would have taken Forrester to task on their apalling inaccuracy of predictions in the past that suggest there's no reason to take this "report" any more seriously than the dozens of "reports" in the past that have mostly missed the boat completely.

I'm disappointed with the media today. All except Cinema Tech have basically copy and pasted the Forrester report without any analysis or even research (it would seem).

Philip