From MarketWatch today

FreeWheel Closes $12M Financing Led by Foundation Capital and Battery Ventures

-       Previous FreeWheel Investor Battery Ventures Joined by Foundation Capital as FreeWheel’s Platform Accelerates the Volume of Premium Video Content Online

San Mateo, CA — April 30, 2009— FreeWheel, the first company to provide complete Monetization Rights ManagementÒ (MRMÔ) for both video content owners and publishers, today announced that it has closed a Series C round of venture capital financing, led by Foundation Capital and existing investor Battery Ventures.  With this investment, Ashmeet Sidana of Foundation Capital joins FreeWheel’s Board of Directors. 

Industry observers point to the wide adoption of FreeWheel’s MRM platform as a catalyst for the growth of premium content within the digital video ecosystem.   In the past 12 months since the US Patent and Trademark Office confirmed FreeWheel’s first mover advantage by registering its trademark for Monetization Rights Management, the company has signed more than 15 content providers as partners, added 15 ad networks and distribution partners, and grown to 70 employees in San Mateo, New York, and Beijing - all while maintaining an extremely strong balance sheet.

“We’re extremely pleased to participate in this round and look forward to adding value to FreeWheel on its Board of Directors,” said Mr. Sidana, General Partner of Foundation Capital, which has extensive experience in changing video models in digital, through its early-stage investments in and participation with Netflix and other companies.  “What FreeWheel is doing is enabling the premium video marketplace to capture value, and we see this as a tremendous opportunity.”

“Only high quality companies can raise capital in this economic environment,” said Roger Lee, General Partner at Battery Ventures.  “We are very fortunate to be an early investor in FreeWheel.  While everyone talks about monetizing online video, FreeWheel is making it happen, and this round is testament to FreeWheel’s team, their flawless execution, and the leadership position they have created.”

FreeWheel’s Monetization Rights Management (MRM) platform enables online video content owners and distributors to dynamically manage their inventory allocation, revenue accounting and ad delivery, thereby removing the barriers preventing revenue being realized across the value chain. FreeWheel’s MRM platform monitors and clarifies revenue share arrangements as well as who has the right to sell ad inventory, across the potentially huge numbers of videos, partnerships and agreements that content owners and distributors may have in place.

“We’re extremely gratified to be working with Foundation and Battery —- two of most advanced thinkers in core technology and digital media —- and this investment is just one more indication of our success in the market,” said Doug Knopper, co-Founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel.  “We’re enabling the development of the digital video ecosystem as it crosses the threshold from nascent opportunity to a multi-billion dollar market, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that it will be FreeWheel’s technology providing that market’s backbone.”

About Battery Ventures

Since 1983, Battery has been investing in technology and innovation worldwide. The firm partners with entrepreneurs and management teams across technology sectors, geographies and stages of a company’s life, from start-up and expansion financing, to growth equity and buyouts. Battery has supported many breakthrough companies around the world, including: Airespace (acquired by Cisco), Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), BladeLogic (acquired by BMC Software), Insitu (acquired by Boeing), LIFFE (acquired by EuroNext), and Neoteris (acquired by Netscreen).

Battery’s current portfolio includes emerging leaders in Cleantech such as: Advent Solar (next generation silicon-based solar technology), Imara (next generation battery technologies), Luminus Devices (solid state lighting), Modular Wind Energy (proprietary blade design for wind turbines), Qteros (advanced biofuels), Redwood Systems (energy control systems for green buildings), and SmartSpark Energy (reliable microinverters for integrated AC PV solar).

From offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, and Israel, Battery manages more than $3 billion in committed capital, including its current fund of $750 million.

About Foundation Capital
Founded in 1995, Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm committed to supporting entrepreneurs and their companies, targeting innovative opportunities in cleantech, consumer Internet and infrastructure; telecommunications and networking; and enterprise software and on demand services. Foundation Capital funds total more than $2.4 billion. For more information, www.foundationcapital.com.

About FreeWheel

To video content owners, rights holders, and publishers, FreeWheel provides the first Monetization Rights Management platform - a technology solution that dramatically reduces the unique financial risks and operational complexities of video ad management across syndication relationships. FreeWheel combines the innovation of a start-up with the most experienced and talented team of industry veterans. With decades of leadership experience at leading ad serving and monetization companies such as DoubleClick, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Visible World, FreeWheel's team is united in the understanding that video is fundamentally different from graphical ad placements and search, and needs a unique solution to deliver maximized revenue with minimal complexity. For more information, please visit: www.freewheel.tv.

Contact:

Mark Naples, 646-265-7372 or mnaples@witstrategy.com

From Business Week Apr 29th, 2009:

A Sector Assembles to Turn Video Pirates Into Gold

Turning anti-piracy into rights management is really starting to resonate for content holders, and vendors are quickly cutting deals

By Liz Gannes

As President Barack Obama recently learned, it's hip to be anti-pirate. But claiming anti-piracy as your life's focus? That's just so antagonistic.

Companies that have won the trust of major networks, and studios have been giving copyright protection a much-needed dose of nuance recently. In a world in which users are going to upload content every time you fail to reach them at exactly the moment they want to watch it, these companies have persuaded content owners to start to think of so-called pirates as viral marketers.

The Missed Opportunity of Unofficial Views

Monetizing unauthorized uploads requires a copyright holder to upload everything it wants watched to a fingerprinting vendor. The fingerprinting vendor also scans live TV, especially for time-sensitive events, like sports. Those two sources constitute an index key that the finger-printer can reference while combing through Web video sites looking for a match—or a sample, a poor copy, or a mash-up. Then, if the content holder has agreed in advance, the finger-printer can leave the unlicensed version up, and overlay links to the official version (basically, house ads) and/or monetize the clip with additional advertising.

Unofficial uploads of premium content are often more popular than official ones. For instance, though Avril Lavigne's official version of her music video for Girlfriend is the most-viewed YouTube video of all time TubeMogul recently measured that just 39.5% of the some 1 billion views of her videos and other people's videos using her songs on YouTube come from official uploads.

Turning anti-piracy into rights management is really starting to resonate for content holders, and vendors are quickly cutting deals to ensure they are compatible with each other. After all, monetizing an unauthorized upload requires the participation of the content holder, the video site, the fingerprinter, and the advertiser or someone representing the advertiser. You need to lay a little groundwork in order to make that happen.

Dealmaking Land Grab

In recent weeks, advertising management provider FreeWheel, a company founded by former DoubleClick execs to focus on ad sales rights for video, cut deals with competing fingerprinting providers Attributor and Vobile, while meanwhile Vobile partnered up with ad network YuMe. FreeWheel works with CBS, Warner Bros., Veoh, Joost, blip.tv, and Sling, while Vobile works with 56.com as well as many movie studios, and Attributor works with Turner Broadcasting. Elsewhere, Auditude works with MySpace, MTV and Warner Bros; BayTSP, and Audible Magic are getting in the game as well. And those are just the deals that have been publicly announced; most of this goes on behind closed doors.

But YouTube was actually first to market with such a technology, with its Content ID tool released in October 2007. By developing its Content ID system in-house (and with some help from Audible Magic) and combining it with its own ad sales, YouTube laid much of the groundwork. 

YouTube says its Content ID system is broadly adopted, though fingerprinters allege they find unauthorized uploads on the site every day. One vendor said as much as 35 percent of unauthorized video uploads for a given copyright holder are on YouTube. YouTube has said that 90% of cases of it discovering content partners' infringement is identified, content owners choose to fight back with ads rather than take-down notices.

Nearly everyone in the sector intimates that they're talking to YouTube about providing their services to strengthen Content ID and enable more rightsholders to come onto the site with their fingerprint index and advertising management tool of choice. Of course, nobody can say that such a deal is done. And YouTube is truly the big kahuna in this market. It would be hard to succeed without signing them up.

Let's Not Get Ahead of Ourselves

But some players have found that turning pirates into marketers is still a bit too leading edge.

Auditude, which achieved some early notoriety for signing MySpace and Viacom to monetize unlicensed uploads, has found that its "attribution ads," which link users to official version of what they're watching, win above-average 1.2 percent click-through rates. However, Auditude is currently de-emphasizing viral tracking. CEO Adam Cahan says there's a bigger opportunity to show premium content owners that they can make money through distributing their shows and movies online themselves.

"What it boils down to is, little premium content is officially distributed because there are challenges monetizing that content," he said. "Once content owners realize the tools are there to enable and streamline advertising, we see they are much more willing to bring their assets online. The more content provided in an accessible and audience friendly manner, the more we see value migrating away from what is today 'unofficial' towards 'official.'"

FreeWheel co-founder and co-CEO Doug Knopper agreed. "User copies will be a critical way to increase exposure, but that's a second-tier problem," he said. "Managing advertising in a syndicated world" is the first order of business.

Still, linking UGC and premium video is an ample opportunity on its own. YouTube didn't build its enormous and insurmountable traffic lead with premium content. But today, as it builds out its Hulu-like library with Content ID partners like CBS and Lionsgate, you can see the pieces of the ecosystem falling into place.