New York’s Innovid announced Wednesday that it has raised $11 million in a Series C round with backing from new investor Vintage Investment Partners and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Genesis Partners, and T-Venture.
Innovid’s platform lets ad agencies working for brands and marketers put interactive video ads on mobile gadgets and PCs. The ads can include interactive elements such as games, contest entries, social apps, and connections to e-commerce. The new cash will go toward bringing the technology to more types of devices, such as gaming consoles and connected TVs.
Zvika Netter, co-founder and CEO of Innovid, says his company worked early on with video ads for Web and mobile because of the increasing usage among those devices.
“Now we’re connecting back to the TV,” he says, “for brands running video over connected devices.” Microsoft Xboxes, Sony PlayStations, and Nintendo Wiis, he says are interactive mediums that link many televisions to the Internet. “These are great platforms for us to release this new type of engagement with an ad,” he says.
The latest funding round puts Innovid’s total venture backing at approximately $27.6 million since it was founded in 2007.
Working with connected consoles and TVs is complex, Netter says, because many of those devices use proprietary technology. Furthermore, interactive video advertising on television is still an early market, he says.
Netter also says the growing trend for sharing video among TVs and other devices is further changing the dynamics of video advertising. Innovid helps deliver interactive video ads through its partnerships with companies such as Sony, through its Crackle on-demand content platform, smart TV app publisher Flingo in San Francisco, and cloud-based content service provider Brightcove in Boston.
“Our job is to connect the pipe so we can send the ad from the agency to specific devices,” he says.
