Conviva announces $40m funding
June 15, 2017
Data-driven OTT intelligence specialist Conviva has announced a funding round of $40 million (€35.9m) from new and existing investors. The round included new investor Future Fund with participation from existing investors NEA (New Enterprise Associates), Foundation Capital, and Time Warner Investments. The funds will support the development of new products, sales and marketing acceleration, and international expansion.
Global OTT consumption, which encompasses film and TV content delivered via the internet, has seen explosive growth in both subscribers and viewing hours. The OTT annual market opportunity exceeds $40 billion today and is growing at double-digit rates. Traditional linear TV consumption has suffered as a result, with an estimated loss of 800,000 pay-TV subscribers in Q1 2017. As people are shifting to open internet viewing across all devices, the need for new tools to measure and analyze content consumption is crucial.
Conviva’s software sensors are currently deployed across 2.5 billion devices globally and measure over 1 billion streaming minutes per day of premium video content for publishers such as HBO, Sky, Turner, and more. In the past year, the company saw 80 per cent growth in viewing minutes and expects that growth to exceed 150 per cent in 2017.
“We have consistently been growing faster than the overall market and have developed a strong, sustainable business model,” says Dr. Hui Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Conviva. “We are excited to close this round of funding so we can accelerate our new product offerings and our global market expansion, extending our technology and market leadership in OTT measurement and analytics.”
Conviva’s enterprise-class big data processing platform and sensor network is deployed by over 200 global brands today. It continuously collects, cleanses, and computes hundreds of video viewing metrics and metadata values from every second of consumers’ video viewing sessions in real-time. This is the foundation for deep, multi-departmental analytics and business intelligence applications powered by an AI for video system trained by the industry’s most diverse, comprehensive, and granular OTT streaming dataset. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of platform capabilities, applications, and integrations with other data-driven systems and services.
“NEA has been part of the Conviva team from day one and we are excited to see the company grow and achieve such great success,” Pete Sonsini, General Partner and Head of Enterprise Investing at NEA. “As the way people consume content continues to evolve, we believe Conviva will be a foundational element of measurement and analytics for the next generation of TV.”
The majority of Conviva AVoD, SVoD, and pay-TV operators are in North America and Europe. The company plans to expand its existing presence in Latin America and Asia. The funding will be used to expand all global sales, marketing, and R&D activities.