Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 12:30 PM PT

Veoh Gets Its $30M from Intel and Adobe

We’d thought the days of big investor reups for video portals were coming to an end, but someone new has stepped up to pay Veoh’s bandwidth bills as it figures out its business. The Internet video portal and software maker is announcing today it has raised $30 million from Intel Capital, Adobe Systems Inc., and Gordon Crawford, senior vice president of Capital Research Global Investors.

Veoh now has $69.5 million in total investment from these three plus previous investors Shelter Capital, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, Time Warner Investments and Jonathan Dolgen. The Los Angeles-based company reports 28 million viewers per month, spending an average of more than 100 minutes per month.

Just last Friday Veoh cut off access to its site from all but 33 countries, citing reorganization of resources and making us wonder what the problem was. Yes, it’s costly deliver video internationally, and it’s hard to make ad revenue back on it. But why drop an existing service and show that weakness? Today, Veoh isn’t ready to admit it’s let go of anything. In a press release about the announcement, the company was still plugging itself as “one of the top global Internet television services.”

The company has experimented with software versions of its service, but currently seems to be only talking about its portal. A spokesperson told us this week “We have a number of meaningful new product additions and ad targeting enhancements on our road map, and we’re actively working to further expand our technology services beyond the PC.”

It was previously rumored that Veoh was raising $40 million, so even such a large sum may have been a step down.

Veoh’s investor list has long made us think twice about counting it out, despite the fact that it has yet to emerge as dominant in any of the categories it’s tried. And now that investor list is even longer. But you still have to execute!

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Topic: Money & Power, Startups

Comments (11)

Veoh is wonderful. Unlimited size uploads, it doesn’t convert everything to FLV; you can download the original file format. The new player and search engine are great. I wish more people knew about it. I prefer it over YouTube. I know many people who frequented Stage 6 have gone to Veoh.

mikecane — 2:41 PM on June 3, 2008 Reply
With Veoh pulling in 28 million viewers per month, we are once again left to question the accuracy of the Nielsen and Comscore ratings. How is it Hulu gets all hyped up as a top 10 video site and yet they are doing less than 10% of the uniques that Veoh is reporting. This is a startling discrepancy from what has been reported and what Veoh is now telling us. Either Veoh is lying, Nielsen stats are way off or the Nielsen reports are intentionally leaving out independent video sites to make their clients look good. My guess is that it’s door #3. I don’t mind if Nielsen wants to cherry pick among the video sites, but I wish that they would be more open about what their lists represent instead of giving them to NewTeeVee and then tricking you into reporting it as a comprehensive list.

Davis Freeberg — 2:52 PM on June 3, 2008 Reply
Veoh treats content creators right. They emphasize well-produced series over gimmicky one-offs.

Fraser — 4:01 PM on June 3, 2008 Reply
@David Freeberg: In my experience, Nielsen’s videocensus rankings favor the big companies who can pay tens of thousands of dollars to subscribe to their services. If you pay them to tag your player, then your company has a way better of being calculated correctly than companies that are measured only by Nielsen’s panel data. This is probably why Hulu shows up high in the rankings even though they have way fewer viewers than Veoh, Dailymotion, etc.

Eric over at techcrunch showed some comscore graphs that paint a more telling picture: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/03/veoh-raises-another-30-million-from-intel-capital-adobe-and-gordon-crawford/

ben — 4:14 PM on June 3, 2008 Reply
Fair warning to the CEO. Choose another place to grant your “first’ interview.
Your integrity and even the status of the legality of your business may be imputed.

Mike — 7:27 AM on June 4, 2008 Reply
@Mike:

Wow – very cryptic. What does that mean? Sounds juicy!

Jeff — 7:56 AM on June 4, 2008 Reply
Any rumors on what the valuation was?

Chris — 8:50 AM on June 4, 2008 Reply
We think Veoh is great, they promote us, they’re open and available to talk, and they favor well produced series over hodge podge. We hope they’re around for some time to come. Congrats on raising the capital.

Carey Lundin — 9:18 AM on June 4, 2008 Reply
I’m from Hungary! And yes! It’s unfair! I watched the veoh day to day! When I firstly saw the message i thougt it were a mistake. But NO! It’s NOT FAIR!
And who want watching? Hungary not so big country. Veoh not have marketing here. What they want? If they will do, they can do money from here too!
PLUS! I have Linux. So when i wanted watching something i had have use the Windows. I don’t like. But i did it for it. And after it they cutid the veoh?

Toffy — 2:39 PM on June 4, 2008 Reply
hi
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good luck

Mindy Schroeder — 1:58 PM on January 8, 2009 Reply
hi
03w6ose37ocojpiq
good luck

Federico Sosa — 2:53 AM on January 10, 2009 Reply

Linkbacks (10)

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[...] NewTeeVee is reporting that someone new has stepped up to pay Veoh’s bandwidth bills as it figures out its business. The Internet video portal and software maker is announcing today it has raised $30 million from Intel Capital, Adobe Systems Inc., and Gordon Crawford, senior vice president of Capital Research Global Investors. [...]

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