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…