VentureBeat

Feds now providing short-term debt — The Federal Reserve will provide money for companies to finance their day-to-day activities, in the government’s latest effort to staunch bleeding in the credit markets.

Live presidential debates hit the web — Hulu will stream tonight’s presidential debate live, something of a breakthrough for Internet TV.

Smart grid co. Silver Spring Networks raises $75M — Rapidly growing energy efficiency startup Silver Spring Networks, which makes communications equipment that connects utilities to electricity consumers, has raised $75M led by Kleiner Perkins’ Green Growth Fund. The company’s $60 million third round was only completed in April of this year.

Social media campaigns have high failure rate — No matter how much you pay your “social media consultant”, your campaign has a 50 percent chance of utterly failing, according to an analyst.

Investors of all stripes hunker down — CNET reports that a recent venture capital meetup held by Northbridge Venture Partners was bubbly on the surface, but worries about survival and changing business models set the real tone. Meanwhile, Fred Wilson points out that major corporations aren’t buying back their own stock, despite seemingly very attractive valuations.

Online advertising may not shrivel, after all — Web startups are plenty worried about an advertising recession due to the credit crunch, an event that could kill many of them off. Blogger Mathew Ingram instead points to a study on the Great Depression, which suggests that advertising was resilient even during the country’s worst financial crisis.

Europeans indicted for US cyberattacks — A pair of men have been fingered for a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in 2003, part of the FBI’s Operation Cyberslam. The FBI shouldn’t crow over its victory, though; five years is ancient history on the Internet, and the majority of online criminals still roam free.

Ad delivery outfit BlackArrow gets $20M — We’ve previously covered BlackArrow, a company that slips targeted ads into on-demand television. The company raised $20 million more from previous investors Cisco Systems, Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund and Polaris Venture Partners.

Oberon Media gets $20M from Chinese fund — Mobile and online casual gaming company Oberon, located in New York City, was funded by the Infinity I-China Fund.

Magazines turn to readers for content — A number of consumer glossies are finally turning to user-generated content, including This Old House, which just printed an entirely user-generated issue.

BlackArrow, a San Mateo, Calif., startup, is offering a new technology to help keep TV advertisers happy.

The company, in secrecy until now, will announce tomorrow (Monday) that it wants to insert targeted ads into on-demand viewing by placing a piece of hardware between cable operators and consumers. Prior to the user watching an on-demand show, BlackArrow helps deliver a brief ad, tailored to the theme of the show and the user’s apparent preferences. For example, a teenage boy might be delivered an ad for an upcoming game like Halo 3.

The company isn’t just another video ad company. It is backed with a $12 million funding round, led by Comcast Interactive Capital, the investment arm of the cable giant.

While DVRs like the TiVo will still allow users to fast forward past advertising, BlackArrow will open up the field for cable companies to profit from acting as remote ad servers. BlackArrow will count on the cable companies to offer their own DVR technology. The advantage for the consumer is not having to worry about buying or installing a hardware DVR. A majority of viewers still haven’t.

BlackArrow is less revolutionary than we’d thought. The company spent more than a year in stealth mode developing its product, and good sources of ours originally suggested that the original aim of the company was to destroy the ad-skipping capabilities of the TiVo. That apparently is no longer the case, if it ever was.

Indeed, the amount of advertising you’ll have to put up with should decrease dramatically, sad CEO Dean Denhart. Advancing standards allow for targeting that is much more valuable to advertisers. Consumers who are dead-set against seeing ads will still be able to rely on their old workarounds.

Like some other advertising startups, BlackArrow can also work with broadband video delivered over the internet. Its best advantage is in its proprietary hardware. The company doesn’t yet have any notable competitors, Denhart claimeed. Large companies like Microsoft, hungry for advertising dollars, are likely to pile in.

Cisco, another investor, has also been testing the company’s equipment. Other investors in the round include Intel, the Mayfield Fund and Polaris Venture Partners. The previous round of $5 million, taken in 2006, was led by Mayfield. The company has raised a total of $17 million. (We’re still trying to reconcile this with our original report that it had raised $14.75 million).

(Updated with Web site URL)

San Mateo start-up BlackArrow has raised $14.75 million to develop a way to insert advertisements in TV and Internet video programming, and it shows the ads even if people try to skip over ads with their DVRs.

It has been secret until now. But this is pretty serious cash for an unknown company. It is, after all, a pretty serious proposition.

Here’s how it works: Take ABC, a network that sells 30-second advertising spots. Roughly a quarter of US households have digital video recorders, and that percentage is growing — and they’re skipping the 30-second spots in greater numbers. Advertisers are now saying that’s uncool, and so ABC says, “Aha, but we can offer enhanced ads — those that are played during the pause, ffwd modes” in video-on-demand and DVR households. So after the original show airs on TV, ABC syndicates the show to their own video web site, potentially other websites. The 30-second TV spots are removed and replaced with a group of pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll ads, as well as companion ads (those that occupy real-estate around the video window) that are shown in the various playback modes. BlackArrow handles the brokerage and placing process by providing these new forms of ad inventory.

The funding comes from Intel Capital (yes, there is a trend here lately), Mayfield and Polaris Venture Partners, as well as Comcast.