Judge dismisses suit against TV ad company Spot Runner
A U.S. district court dismissed the lawsuit accusing TV ad company Spot Runner of committing a “pump and dump” scheme.
WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, filed suit against Spot Runner’s executives in April, saying that the founders committed fraud by selling large quantities of the company’s shares without disclosing the sales to investors. The advertising giant alleged that Spot Runner’s founders aggressively promoted WPP’s $10 million investment in it to gain new investors…. Continue Reading
After layoffs, Spot Runner down but not out
Spot Runner, a digital agency for television and online video advertisers, announced that it laid off another 60 employees last week, adding to its earlier deep cuts of 115 in November and 50 in August. Things are looking pretty grim for the Los Angeles-based company and its competitors, but Spot Runner insists that it’s not down for the count and that the recent changes were only made to buoy operations until the recession lifts at… Continue Reading
Google expands its television ad platform with Bloomberg TV
Advertising is perhaps now the key element to Google. One could even make the argument that it’s even more vital to the company now than its core product, search, is. After all, if someone pulled the plug on Google’s AdSense and AdWords revenues, the company would be a shadow of itself. That’s why it continues to diversify its advertising projects.
Television is a particularly important space when it comes to advertising, and today, Google has announced… Continue Reading
Spot Runner lays off 50 as it realigns its strategy
Spot Runner, which lets advertisers place to local TV stations via an online service, has laid off 50 of its employees as it realigns its strategy.
The Los Angeles company says the layoffs amount to 10 percent of its employees and it plans to hire another 40, said Rosabel Tao, a spokeswoman. The news of such drastic changes is surprising, since the company has plenty of cash in the bank from a $51 million round announced… Continue Reading
Spot Runner raises $51M to expand self-serve TV ad business
Spot Runner, which lets advertisers place to local TV stations via an online service, has raised a whopping $51 million in funding
The move confirms our earlier report that Spot Runner was in the midst of a big raise with a high valuation. The company can do so in a tough economic environment because it has good technology that allows it to automate the media-buying process and has relationships with a variety of media companies.
The business… Continue Reading
Zoho pushes ahead with Microsoft Office compatability, open APIs
Zoho, a company that is providing one of the widest selection on online office applications, continues to impress.
The company has released a plugin for Microsoft Office, and opened its APIs. The plugin makes Zoho what Microsoft’s online applications (dubbed Live) should be. It allows Zoho documents to be opened and saved in MS Office with a click (Word and Excel, at least; PowerPoint doesn’t work yet with Zoho, but will come). If you’ve got Microsoft office… Continue Reading
Ads, ads everywhere: SpotRunner, Rhythm get big $ infusions
Updated
The advertising revolution continues, in both the Internet and wireless worlds.
Spot Runner, the internet start-up that gives advertisers an easier, cheaper way to insert their ads into local TV programming, has raised $40 million more in backing.
And Rhythm NewMedia, meanwhile, has soaked up $18 million more in venture capital, to claim a stake in the other sexy ad area right now: inserting ads in wireless video clips.
This is a lot of money for… Continue Reading
Roundup: The valley’s lure, Sequoia out of Google, Office 2.0, Lala & more
YouTube will contribute to valley’s allure — Two years ago, Google’s buzz, even before its IPO, gave entrepreneurs like Tribe’s founder Mark Pincus inspiration to dream up the social networking revolution. YouTube’s grand sale will also inspire a new wave of entrepreneurs, no doubt. The WSJ has a timely piece — written before YouTube’s sale was announced — about the entrepreneurs still coming to Silicon Valley.
There’s Matt Sanchez, co-founder of video company VideoEgg, who found… Continue Reading
Fleet-footed Zoho — and other office productivity companies
Zoho is a notable company because it keeps offering new, cheap office software at a breakneck pace. Owned by AdventNet, of Pleasanton, the company keeps firing off software updates, at a stubbornness that suggests this company is going somewhere.
Like Techcrunch, VentureBeat finds it challenging to cover this company’s machine gun-like bursts (coming every two weeks or so) of releases. See Zoho blog.
This is not a Web 2.0 era company. The company started in 1996, before… Continue Reading