Veenome, a startup that analyzes video content to improve ad targeting (as well as analytics and SEO), just announced that it has raised $600,000 in new funding.
The company is also announcing a partnership with video ad network BrightRoll. Veenome CEO Kevin Lenane said this is part of a larger shift in strategy — the startup originally focused on providing its services to publishers, but is now trying to work with networks. Turns out that selling to publishers was a bigger challenge than expected (Lenane said many are “not as motivated by revenue as you might think”), while the new approach should give Veenome wider reach.
In fact, comScore recently reported that BrightRoll serves the most video ads of any network in the United States. A BrightRoll spokesperson told me that the company uses Veenome’s technology to classify video content, and that the startup is “one of many companies BrightRoll partners with to ensure brand-safe inventory to our clients.”
Veenome says its technology can translate video content into “actionable” data by dividing videos into different (Internet Advertising Bureau-based) categories, identifying objectionable or copyrighted content, and adding tags for brands, products, and faces. All of that can lead to smarter ad targeting and more useful campaign data, which in turn makes advertisers willing to pay higher CPMs. (The company says that it more than doubles CPM revenue for its customers.) Other Veenome customers include ad network Adtheorent and publisher Videofy.me.
The new funding comes from India Venture Partners, the Center For Innovative Technology, Piedmont Investment Advisors, UberOffices founder Ray Rahbar, Glen Hellman, Nick Tabbal, Dave Sandrowitz, and others. Veenome raised a $500,000 round last year, so this brings its total funding to $1.1 million.
Veenome automatically translates videos into data at a very large scale to help Ad Networks and Publishers lift their CPMs through targeting, reduce fraud through viewability detection and eliminate brand safety/objectionable content concerns. Specifically the data that we create from these videos includes: IAB Category, IAB Subcategory, Brand Safety Category, Viewability(Player size, player page position, autoplay and muting detection), Duration, Player Size, Media Size, Media Type, Media URL, Page URL and FPS Which gets used for: Moderation/brand safety Categorization and classification for CPM...
With more than 70 million monthly unique viewers, BrightRoll is the world’s largest and most trusted video ad network and the leading provider of digital video advertising services. The BrightRoll Network has access to billions of video impressions per month enabling advertisers to execute smart digital video campaigns across a massive pool of web and mobile video inventory. BrightRoll’s proprietary buying technology, combined with its full site disclosure, detailed performance reports and flexible targeting provide brands and agencies with...
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