Podbridge announced that it closed a new round of
venture funding totaling $8.5 million. Proceeds will be used to accelerate the
company's market expansion, scaling the business and making further inroads in
monetizing all types of downloadable video and audio content.
New investor Sutter Hill Ventures led this Series B round with initial investors
Mayfield Fund and Worldview Technology Partners also participating. The company
announced that Greg Sands, a Managing Director with Sutter Hill Ventures, has joined
initial investors Yogen Dalal, a Managing Director of Mayfield Fund, and Irwin Gross, a
General Partner at Worldview Technology Partners on the Podbridge board.
"This new funding further validates our business strategy and growing
leadership as a provider of audience measurement and ad insertion services for
downloadable video and audio content," said Murgesh Navar, founder and CEO of
Podbridge. "We envision providing analytics and ad services for downloaded content
across a wide range of media players and devices."
Market research firm eMarketer forecasts that spending on Internet
video advertising will grow from $775 million in 2007 to $2.9 billion in 2010, with 10
percent of the dollars devoted to Internet advertising used for video placements.
"In the near future, most mainstream video, including TV shows and movies,
will become freely and legitimately downloadable over the Internet. Advertising will
form the backbone of business models surrounding downloadable content," said Greg
Sands, Managing Director of Sutter Hill Ventures. "Podbridge technology allows
publishers and advertisers to comfortably release their valuable content in consumer
downloadable formats, secure in the knowledge such consumption will be measured
and monetized."
Podbridge currently provides measurement and advertisement services to many
large media companies including Bloomberg, C/Net, Forbes, The Nielsen Company and
InfoWorld among others.
Source: Podbridge
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