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New Media News Every Morning

Yodle secures $10 million funding

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Yodle, Inc. has completed a $10 million Series C funding led by JAFCO Ventures. They were joined by Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth and existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Bessemer Venture Partners. The funds will be used to double investment in product and technology innovation as well as to continue a national sales expansion.

Demand for local online advertising fueled tremendous growth at Yodle in 2008, despite the economic downturn. The New York-based company reported 700% year-over-year revenue growth from 2007 and ending 2008. Yodle now boasts approximately 5,000 customers – up from 125 in 2006.

Originally posted on January 12, 2009 @ 10:59 am

AOL expands its publishing unit with MediaGlow; Now a fully ad-supported business

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mediaglow6-1.epsAOL announced today a series of significant developments that will dramatically expand, reposition and monetize its digital publishing business in 2009. Anchoring today’s announcement is the creation of a new AOL business unit, MediaGlow, which will centralize AOL’s entire publishing efforts, with the goal of greatly expanding the unit’s global reach in the coming year.

This move also completes AOL’s transformation to an advertising supported business. MediaGlow and its publishing assets will now join Platform-A and People Networks as the third core business for AOL.

In conjunction with today’s announcement, AOL announced two important publishing developments:

• MediaGlow will continue its aggressive momentum in the development of the new AOL.com, and its vertical Web sites focused on passion points, with the goal of creating over 30 editorially curated sites in 2009. In addition to newly curated sites, MediaGlow will also maximize the technology of acquired companies Relegence and Sphere and begin an unprecedented effort to build thousands of medium and long-tail focused automated sites in 2009 and 2010, which will efficiently continue AOL’s growth position in publishing.

* MediaGlow will add to its infrastructure two state-of-the-art studios, located in AOL Headquarters in New York City and its offices in Los Angeles. MediaGlow Studios will provide new video production capabilities from hi-def video to complete editing and encoding. The studios will also be used to shoot original video productions that will now be distributed globally.

Originally posted on January 12, 2009 @ 12:24 pm

Burst Media, redOrbit.com launch branded vertical ad network

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Burst Media announced a partnership with redOrbit.com to launch a branded vertical advertising network targeting an audience interested in science, space, technology and health news.

The network includes more than 60 science and technology-focused websites, providing a unique opportunity for web marketers to reach 22 million highly educated, affluent and influential individuals.

By providing web marketers with access to so many high impact sites at once, the redOrbit Network offers minimal buying complexity.

Originally posted on January 14, 2009 @ 8:28 am

Blinkx introduces Un-roll Unit

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Video search engine Blinkx has introduced the Un-roll Unit, an entirely new and immersive branding experience that gives advertisers the unique opportunity to tell a compelling story through their brand and online television, and enables users to engage with a brand continuously throughout a video.

Un-roll was developed in-house by Blinkx in response to the industry’s need for an alternative format to traditional pre- and post-roll advertisements. Available through Blinkx AdHoc, the contextual advertising platform for online video, the Un-roll integrates a brand with relevant, professionally-produced programming on the web and serves up multiple touch-points, including contextual overlay ads and logos, throughout the viewing experience. This ability to weave a brand into online television is extremely powerful, not only in terms of enhancing viewer experience, but also in generating higher rates of engagement.

The Un-Roll works like this:

• The unit begins with a branded curtain that draws back to reveal the video and a branded blinkx video player when the video has fully buffered.

• As the video plays, touch-points such as overlay ads and logos appear at contextually relevant moments within the video

• The video ends with a clear call-to-action and the viewer has the option to continue the experience on the brand’s web site.

Originally posted on December 29, 2008 @ 11:30 am

Mobile social network itsmy.com supports US auto industry with 100 million free ads

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Mobile social network itsmy.com announced its support to the US automotive industry with 100 million free of cost mobile web page impressions for brand advertising with banners. The social campaign will be displayed between January and March 2009 in mobile Internet for customers of all carriers in the US.

A social survey conducted with more than 1,000 respondents within itsmy.com in December 2008 has shown that 81% would love to support the automotive industry which is so heavily affected by the financial crisis.
 
On the other hand, carmakers have been amongst the best mobile advertisers at itsmy.com in the past. Therefore the itsmy.com Management decided to support the industry by giving away 100 Million mobile page impressions for a symbolic total payment of 1$.
 
All the car manufacturers marketing units or the lead media agencies have to do is to contact the itsmy.com team via email: [email protected], send the mobile creatives and fill out the PO for 1$. The inventory offered will be split among all applicants.
 

Originally posted on December 17, 2008 @ 12:55 pm