Jivox, an online video advertising platform for local businesses announced that it has ended its Series A round of funding at $10.7 million, led by Opus Capital, an early stage venture capital firm. An India-focused venture fund, Helion Venture Partners also participated along with existing partners as reported in the press release.
The funds are targeted at developing Jivox and expanding the marketing strides and sales. Jivox has made substantial progress since its launch in March 2008, and has been broadly adopted for its self-service, which allows users to utilize its web-based editing tools and a large database of ready-made video clips and savvy music; something that would have been too much on cost for the local advertisers with low budgets.
With a video network that expands over 40 million viewers across video publishers in the United States and India, compared to the already existing big names like YuMe with 129 Million viewers, Tremor Media with 109 million users, the only differentiating factor here with Jivox is that it doesn’t target the premium brands like its competitors. The target is set at local advertisers who aren’t brand conscious and would do with anything that gets their message through.According to Diaz Nesamoney, the founder and CEO of Jivox:
“2 – 3% of viewers click on Jivox’s in-stream ads, which appear in the beginning, middle or end of a video that is played. These ads generate around $30 – $40 for every thousand clicks, despite that the majority of the people dislike it.�
Helion Ventures Pvt. Ltd. Managing Director, Ashish Gupta commented:
“We look forward to working with Jivox as it accelerates its growth in this market.�
Now Jivox claims its strength lies in strong revenues and with its rapid growth in the market, Jivox has raised a pretty substantial amount in its first round of financing and may very well rise up as a formidable challenge to its competitors. The reason or such rapid growth might very well be the fact that Jivox targets the advertisers who have limited budget to market their products and with no compulsion of selecting only the hi-fi brands that Jivox’s competitors have to offer.
