AnyClip raises $21m to expand global video reach
Investment by Jewish oligarch Roman Abramovich looks to make Israeli tech firm a leader in digital content distribution
Russian oligarchs are famous for their savvy investing strategies, and that’s good news for Israeli digital video and advertising tech company AnyClip, which counts Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich among its latest investors.
Abramovich, represented by Ervington Investments, is part of a just-completed $21 million funding round for the company, along with Limelight Networks (LLNW), a global leader in digital content delivery. Current shareholders Jerusalem Venture Partners, GTI and other investors also participated in this expansion round.
Abramovich’s net worth in 2015 was $9.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. This makes him the 12th richest person in Russia and the 137th richest person in the world.
As the owner of several soccer teams, among other things – he’s best known for his ownership of London’s Chelsea Football Club – Abramovich is known to watch a lot of video and game replays, looking for ways to make his teams play better. AnyClip is a video company too, which partners with content producers and owners to develop, curate and distribute their content for Web sites, devices, smartphones, etc. The company’s search engine can find almost any clip in thousands of movies, providing advertisers, video and film producers, music video directors and others with just the right clip to highlight their scene, product or musical composition.
AnyClip, which has been operating in Israel in 2009, has actually evolved into one of the world’s biggest media companies. Via its distribution network and metadata search engine, the tech firm comes in among the top 10 of comScore’s list of sites with the most unique viewers — coming in just behind content giants Amazon, Vimeo and Turner Digital (the online arm of CNN and affiliated sites).
According to comScore, AnyClip Media is responsible for almost 2% of the world’s video ad inventory — quite an achievement considering that there are thousands of companies competing in this space, according to Oren Nauman, AnyClip Media’s CEO. The company’s ranking on the comScore’s top10 list along with major Internet brands like Yahoo and Facebook is, he said, in a large part, due to the extensive reach of AnyClip’s network.
The new funding comes at a significant time, as AnyClip is experiencing accelerated growth in recent months, said Nauman. Currently, content owners, marketers and advertisers are leveraging the platform to serve premium video to 40-80 million unique global consumers monthly.
According to a study by the IAB, digital video ad spending will increase 46 percent in 2015, reflecting a total spend of $10.3 billion. AnyClip plans to take advantage of this growth by using the additional funding to further enhance its search and match engines, to find the best clip for each client’s need, Nauman added.
“With this additional funding, we will continue to build on our revolutionary technology platform to provide publishers, advertisers and content owners with the most advanced and secure solutions for effective global distribution of online video,” he said. “Combined with the increased growth in mobile video solutions, we are positioned at the center of the fastest-growing sector of the advertising industry.”
