Mediabong (no, not that kind) inhales $5M for U.S. expansion

Mediabong has scored $5 million to come to the U.S.

No, this doesn’t mean the arrival of Net-connected pot-smoking devices, in spite of the fact that such a market opening apparently exists.

Instead, it means that the Paris-based video ad network of that name has come ashore with the recent opening of an office in New York City. The name, CEO and founder Laurent Bury told me via email, translates into “progression in media” in French. (Although when we tried the Google translator, it translated “bong” and “mediabong” into, well, “bong” and “mediabong.”)

The company, founded in 2011 in Paris, offers a patented video ad technology called SyncRoll. It reads in real time what a story is about and analyzes what kind of content the user selects, in order to serve an appropriate in-story video-with-ad, or a standalone video ad.

It also addresses the hot topic of viewability by making it harder for the user to avoid the video ad. If the video is in the middle of a page, and the user scrolls down, the video immediately jumps to the page end and resumes playing where it left off.

In this demo, for instance, two video ad units are synchronized between the one inside the story and one on the bottom right.

This demonstration shows synchronization between the same video ad in the middle of the page and at the end.

These kind of techniques, Mediabong said, have led to a 40 percent jump in viewability for its client Kellogg’s and a 75 percent increase in sales.

Mediabong currently works with more than six dozen publishers in the UK, Germany, and Belgium. It has been active in the U.S. for the last seven months, working with Newsweek, CBS, Reuters, and the Associated Press.

The company, which has received $6.5 million in total investment, originally started as a video syndicator offering an automated solution for adding more video to stories. Video-based roll-in ads pay some of the highest rates.

In addition to supporting the U.S. expansion, the new funding will be used to expand the company’s presence in European markets. The Series B round was led by two European funds, Entrepreneur Venture and Conegliano Venture.