VideoPlaza: right place and time for a video ad overlay service

Written on 13th July 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Swedish video advertisement overlay service VideoPlaza has received €420,000 seed investment from Nordic VC Creandum and angels Henrik Torstensson and Magnus Hultman. VideoPlaza has been doing well – partnering up with Sweden’s number-three pay-TV station Kanal 5’s website and two other clients – and operates in a booming market.

CEO Sorosh Tavakoli

The Swedes watch 115% more online videos over the last year, so VideoPlaza has enough content to monetize. The money will be used for international expansion.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal got two anonymous sources talking about YouTube’s failing advertisement strategy. The video giant generates 10 billion video views a day, but ‘only’ manages to make $200 million a year from advertising. Thus the Google-owned company might introduce pre and post-roll ads, said the sources to WSJ.

This YouTube story symbolizes the need for video sites to monetize their content. VideoPlaza – that offers overlay ads for Flash and Silverlight videos – will be one of many video ad start-ups that receive a financial boost. It’s time for them to fix those crappy business models.

By the way, VideoPlaza has an effective and friendly team page – good inspiration for yours.

business models, future of video, monetization, pre-roll ads, video ads, Video Interview, video service, videoplaza, youtube

3 Comments »

Rambler introduces contextual video advertising

Written on 30th June 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Rambler Media, one of Russia’s leading Internet companies (€38 Million in 2007), has announced contextual advertising for video content. Its advertising division – Begun – will integrate Begun.Videocontext on Rambler’s video sharing community, Rambler Vision. That means 1.3 million visitors per month will see the ads.

Each video appearing on Rambler Vision is tagged according to its content and as a result,
advertisements can be displayed beneath relevant videos. Rambler claims to be the first Russian web service to profit from contextual ads, which is remarkable, as online videos attract more Russian viewers than cable TV channels. Begun will sell the ads on a CPC bases.

If you’re a Russian reader, let me set you at ease: you can easily click the ad away.

[Via: Quintura]

advertising, begun, online video, rambler, rambler.vision, tags, video ads

1 Comment »