Video advertising company FreeWheel has raised $16.8 million in funding from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures, and existing investors, including Turner Broadcasting System, Battery Ventures, and Foundation Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to nearly $30 million.
Founded by former DoubleClick employees in 2007, FreeWheel allows marketers and publishers to manage video advertising campaigns across a variety of distribution sites. FreeWheel’s technology allows media companies to operate an advertising platform for online video, including managing ad sales rights, producing inventory forecasts for live or on demand content, delivering a yield-optimized set of ads, and analyzing video business performance.
FreeWheel, which was recently speculated to be an acquisition target, will use the new investment to build out product development and scale its infrastructure. FreeWheel’s media clients include Turner, VEVO, CBS and MLB.com and serves over two billion ad impressions per month. The company also announced formalized agreements with both Discovery Communications LLC and ESPN Internet Ventures to help manage ad businesses and monetize both companies’ digital video content.
FreeWheel manages the economics of content for the enterprise-class world of entertainment, offering technical infrastructure for revenue rights management and business operations, wrapped in advisory services. Founded and led by a team of executives from the world’s leading technology companies, FreeWheel’s solutions have already armed companies like ABC, AOL, DIRECTV, ESPN, NBC Universal, Sky, Turner, and Viacom with the technology and services they need to profitably scale their professional content across devices and revenue models.
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
