Vidible, a startup connecting buyers and sellers of video content, is confirming that it has raised a $3.35 million Series A led by Greycroft Partners.
The round was first revealed in a regulatory filing in late December, but the company is only confirming the news and sharing details now. In addition to Greycroft, IDG also participated in the new funding, according Vidible co-founder and President Tim Mahlman (pictured).
Mahlman give me a quick demo of the product. He said that the current methods of syndicating videos are “archaic,” with publishers usually forced to look through unsorted Media RSS feed, and with very little control or transparency. With Vidible, on the other hand, content buyers can search for different kinds of videos, or they can just include the Vidible tag on their site and relevant videos will be played automatically. The content creators, meanwhile, have control over where their videos get played, and both sides have access to analytics.
Greycroft’s John Elton argued that Vidible is taking advantage of three broad trends — the growth in video consumption, the “increasing demand from content sites for video,” and the “increasing demand from advertisers for video impressions.” When asked if he thinks we’ll see an increasing number of sites syndicating videos created by others, rather than creating the videos themselves, he noted that most newspaper companies (for example) didn’t create TV channels either, “So why do we think they’re going to be able to do that for online video?”
“I think it’s a new medium,” Elton added. “There are people that do it very well, that are looking for more distribution, and there are publishers looking for content that’s appropriate for their site.”
He also said that he’s impressed by Vidible’s focus on monetization. The content buyer pays a set rate based on impressions, then they can either run their own ads with the videos or run ads from one of Vidible’s network partners.
Mahlman and his co-founder/CEO Michael Hyman both have ad tech experience (Hyman’s company Oggifinogi was acquired by Collective, while Mahlman has held positions at companies like Turn and BlueLithium), and apparently they’ve been working on Vidible for the past year. Mahlman said the beta version of the product launched over the summer, with 100 video providers now signed up and more than 1 billion impressions served each month.
“We’ve been focused on R&D until now,” Mahlman said. “Now it’s a matter of building out the business arm.”
He added that Vidible is also looking to expand internationally.
