Reggie Bradford, formerly President of Tandberg Television, CEO of N2 Broadband and CMO of WebMD, together with General Catalyst Partners, unveiled ViTrue, Inc. -- the World's first User-Created Advertising Platform.
The newly formed company announced that it has closed $2.2 million in funding from General Catalyst Partners and ViTrue's founder. The company also disclosed that it has acquired Sharkle.com, one of the top 5 consumer generated video sharing communities on the Web with more than 100,000 registered users, more than one million unique visitors and more than 15 million page views per month.
"Broadband Internet has completely disrupted the model for creating and distributing video. At the same time, the Internet is a viral marketercs dream come true," said Bradford, founder and CEO of ViTrue, Inc. "ViTrue takes advantage of these market dynamics, enabling the advertising community to spearhead the next realm of user-generated content - consumer created advertisements."
According to market research firm eMarketer, the online video ad market is growing at a 61 percent CAGR and is expected to reach $1.5 billion in 2009. In addition, the firm finds that online video ads are projected to grow from 17.9 percent to 42.4 percent of the total spent on rich media.
With tens of millions of consumers regularly generating and distributing videos via the Internet, ViTrue will tap this vast creative marketplace through its platform to help major brands cost-effectively develop more relevant and engaging advertisements. Consumer generated advertisements will cost a fraction of the expense and time typically associated with creating today's 15 and 30 second television advertisements.
The newly formed company announced that it has closed $2.2 million in funding from General Catalyst Partners and ViTrue's founder. The company also disclosed that it has acquired Sharkle.com, one of the top 5 consumer generated video sharing communities on the Web with more than 100,000 registered users, more than one million unique visitors and more than 15 million page views per month.
"Broadband Internet has completely disrupted the model for creating and distributing video. At the same time, the Internet is a viral marketercs dream come true," said Bradford, founder and CEO of ViTrue, Inc. "ViTrue takes advantage of these market dynamics, enabling the advertising community to spearhead the next realm of user-generated content - consumer created advertisements."
According to market research firm eMarketer, the online video ad market is growing at a 61 percent CAGR and is expected to reach $1.5 billion in 2009. In addition, the firm finds that online video ads are projected to grow from 17.9 percent to 42.4 percent of the total spent on rich media.
With tens of millions of consumers regularly generating and distributing videos via the Internet, ViTrue will tap this vast creative marketplace through its platform to help major brands cost-effectively develop more relevant and engaging advertisements. Consumer generated advertisements will cost a fraction of the expense and time typically associated with creating today's 15 and 30 second television advertisements.