This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

2007 has been a milestone year for video advertising with a gamut of companies attacking the opportunity from every which way. Today Adap.tv, a relatively new entrant into the contextual video advertising space, is announcing a new initiative with potential to propel it to the front of the pack. Adap.tv is letting advertisers without any video advertising experience jump right in with practically no effort, and zero production cost.

Generally speaking, advertisers face a number of challenges in respect to in-video advertising: Pre/Post rolls typically cost in the $10-$30 per CPM range. On top of that, producing the ads themselves is a costly endeavor. Then there’s the matter of being able to convey only a single message. Lastly, the inability to safeguard against ad placement in questionable content is a major deterrent for many advertisers.

adap.tv’s new offering tackles most of these issues head-on, with the most interesting aspect being support of keyword and product datafeeds—routinely used to structure search engine marketing campaigns. This is significant because it means that advertisers can reuse existing datafeeds by importing them right into adap.tv for instant targeted video advertising campaigns. Advertisers using AdWords or Overture can easily export their campaign structures to CSV format, upload them into adap.tv, and presto: instant video ads.

On top of datafeed support, adap.tv is also introducing:

• Content Rating: Advertisers can employ content rating levels—G, PG, PG-13 & NC-17—in three dimensions: violent, sexual and illegal content. Rating levels are automatically determined for each video through adap.tv’s content analysis technology.
• Ad Templates: Brand oriented look & feel can be leveraged through ad templates which can range from flat, to animated, to interactive (see video below).

Amir Ashkenazi, CEO, claims that publisher and viewer growth is doubling month-over-month and that the company serves ads and pays publishers on almost every video view. Advertisers now include the likes of Amazon, Kayak, EVOgear and Let’sTalk.

The race for UGC video monetization is in full throttle and while it’s hard to pin-point a clear leader at this point, adap.tv is certainly positioning itself as a player to keep an eye on. VideoEgg and others are also strong contenders, and YouTube is the 800 pound gorilla.

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This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

In another example that investments in Internet advertising startups are far from cooling, eXelate is announcing a $4M investment from Carmel Ventures.

The Israeli company offers a marketplace called the “eXelate Targeting eXchange” which is focused on what they are calling “Delayed-Ads.”

Here’s how it works: An ad network participating in eXelate’s exchange purchases from publishers the right to place Delayed-Ad cookies on users with vertical-specific interests (travel, automotive, etc.). When such users later visit publisher sites that fall under the realm of the ad network, they are shown targeted ads relevant to the interest-specific site they received their Delayed-Ad cookie on. Hence, “Delayed-Ad.”

Is this basically a twist on behavioral targeting and retargeting? Generally speaking yes, except that eXelate restricts itself from building user profiles like traditional behavioral ad networks such as TACODA. Nor does it retarget traffic within the ad networks employing its system.

eXelate may not be revolutionary, but it doesn’t have to be. The online marketing pie is huge and many players, even the non-revolutionary ones, can still claim their stake. This is especially true in international markets where the US-based heavy hitters are at a cultural disadvantage.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

This is an especially good week for payment service provider Payoneer which is announcing it has received the remaining $3M of a $4M Greylock investment , and a new deal with iStockphoto.

Payoneer offers Web-based businesses a method to pay their members/users/partners by way of prepaid debit cards. The fully-functioning debit MasterCards are issued to payees worldwide and can be used online, at points-of-sale, or at ATM’s for cash withdrawals in local currency.

The 800-pound payment service provider is PayPal of course. (PaidByCash is another competitor). However, while PayPal is the top online payment service when it comes to person-to-person transactions, it is far from perfect in other respects, especially when it comes to international payments. For payees residing outside the US, PayPal cannot match the ease and simplicity that Payoneer offers when it comes to receiving their funds.

PayPal requires a bank account to transfer funds internationally. To confirm the bank account, PayPal makes a micro-deposit (a few cents) into the account, and then has the payee report back the exact amount, thereby “proving” account ownership. The problem is that for this process to even take place, the banking institutions in the country where the payee resides must support EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). Not all countries do. For example, India, China the USSR countries, and some Latin American countries don’t. (Incidentally, this wacky process is why I still don’t have a PayPal account… I’ve gone through it 4-5 times in the past few years… The micro-deposit doesn’t register in my account immediately and by the time I remember it, I’ve already made the purchase in some other manner).

On Payoneer, account verification—a PayPal staple—is a non-issue. Anyone worldwide over 13 can get a card and get paid. Cards require one-time shipping and are then loaded and re-loaded electronically by Payoneer. Convenience-wise, the hassles and high fees normally associated with Wire Transfer and Check payments are greatly reduced or, when a bank is involved in the process, averted completely.

Other than the expected back-office goodies, Payoneer offers its business customers a branding and retention tool in the form of a co-branded MasterCard (see examples right).

Payoneer is also announcing the addition of iStockphoto to its client roster. Today, iStock will begin offering Payoneer as a payment method to its 35,000 contributing artists who earn royalties on the sale of their images and videos. Among Payoneer’s 70 clients are oDesk, MetaCafe, Amie Street and Plimus.

Founded in 2005, Payoneer employs 25 and is headquartered in New York with R&D in Tel-Aviv, Israel. A $2M seed round was raised from Payoneer’s CEO himself, Yuval Tal and private investors including Zohar Gilon, Charlie Federman, Michael Loeb and Ilan Kaufthal. Greylock (Israel) added a total of $4M in Series A this year, with Moshe Mor the partner attached to the deal.

This post was originally posted on MobileCrunch.com as part of my blogging on the Israeli startup scene for TechCrunch.com.

MetaCafe has announced it will begin offering video download and streaming to mobile handsets. The offering which will debut next month in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands will also allow users to upload video directly from the handsets themselves.

The new service is offered by way of a partnership with Peerbox whose solution goes beyond video download/upload to include social functionality such as rating, commenting, etc. Peerbox primarily supports handset vendors Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

The exclusive screenshot below shows how the integration from the MetaCafe side will look like.

Unlike YouTube, MetaCafe has not been afraid to experiment. This partnership comes after moves such as a pilot with adap.tv and the Producer Rewards program.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

Globes is reporting that RayV has raised $8M in Series B from Accel Partners.

While the company has been in stealth mode, and its site offers little information, sources have confirmed that RayV is developing a P2P live broadcasting offering. Evidentially, users will be able to create and broadcast video playlists at “high video quality”. Similar to Joost, RayV will require the installation of a client application.

To date, the company has been funded mainly by Ron Zuckerman who is among the founders of Magma Venture Partners (formerly Magnum Ventures). Zuckerman also co-founded Precise (acquired by Veritas) and Sapiens.

 This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

Can a user-defined dictionary be done better than Wikipedia’s Wiktionary? Babylon, a maker of popular for-pay translation/dictionary desktop software, certainly thinks so, and they are launching Lingoz to prove it.Lingoz is a collaborative, online dictionary where users are encouraged to participate by contributing terms and definitions, as well as by voting, commenting and aggregating words into helpful glossaries.

Considered a modest Israeli success story, Babylon has been around since 1997 and has sold 1.6 million licenses in over 160 countries. As the company’s first pure Web play, Lingoz is being kicked-off with a substantial base of 4.5M terms in 8 languages, leveraging the vast 9M definition database Babylon has amassed over its 10 years of operation. An additional 42 languages will be rolled-out in the coming months.

Back to Wiktionary for a moment. The editorial back-and-forth process that works so well for encyclopedic entries on Wikipedia seems less successful when applied to defining dictionary terms, a process more suited towards voting on multiple versions of a definition.

Cognizant of Wiktionary’s shortcomings, Lingoz is being launched with a sensible set of social/UGC features: Terms can be submitted or requested. Voting on content quality is performed with a simple thumbs-up/down. Users can also define brand-new glossaries themselves, or request ones to be created. Glossaries may prove quite sticky as there are virtually an infinite number of potential themes that can be built out (think Web 2.0 terms, 60’s Hollywood actresses, etc—although a good starting point might be an actual definition for Web 2.0, which does not yet exist on the site.

The main competition Lingoz faces is from Answers.com—ironically, another Israeli company. Answers.com doesn’t embrace UGC yet. If Lingoz can become the Wikipedia of online dictionaries, perhaps one day it will give Answers.com a run for its money. That would especially be true if Lingoz could attract substantial Google traffic. As Google’s default “definition” provider, Answers.com is especially vulnerable to any changes in referrals from Google. (For instance, a recent Google search algorithm tweak reduced their traffic by 28%). How do you define opportunity?