Visible Measures
The core of Visible Measures' technology is a tracker that content owners attach to their videos. Once installed, they can see what viewers do with the video -- how long they watch for, whether they use controls like the pause, whether they rewind or jump forward or even change the volume.
All of this is aimed at a few very simple objectives. Publishers want to put ads in their videos, and to do so, they need to know what their viewers will put up with. And, for the content itself, they want to see what viewers like in the first place.
For the moment, Visible Measures is aiming mainly at large media publishers -- the network television companies of the world, who have the most to lose or gain from moving their content online. However, the company also recently acquired VidMeter, which helps smaller publishers put their content out onto video networks.
Mohr Davidow Ventures led the $13.5 million funding round, announced in conjunction with the product launch. General Catalyst, which provided Visible Measures' first round of $5 million, also participated. The company is based in Boston, with offices in Palo Alto.
The company provides a video "demo," but it's vague and not very useful:
http://cdn.visiblemeasures.com/vmcassets/videos/flvplayer.swf