ATLANTA – ViTrue, an Atlanta-based online video advertising startup, has raised $2.2 million in a round of venture capital led by Cambridge, MA-based General Catalyst Partners.
The company’s platform will feature all of the applications and services needed for amatuer consumers to generate video advertisements for free, “as well as the necessary technology infrastructure required for major brands to successfully align these consumer efforts with their key marketing campaigns.”
ViTrue was founded by Reggie Bradford, who formerly served as president of Tandberg Television and CEO of N2 Broadband, as well as chief marketing officer of WebMD. Bradford also personally invested in the first round.
“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.”
Along with the launch and funding, ViTrue announced it had acquired Sharkle.com, a consumer-generated video sharing community on the web that has about 100,000 registered users, more than one million unique visitors and more than 15 million page views per month.
According to market research firm eMarketer, the online video ad market is growing at a 61% annually and is expected to reach $1.5 billion in 2009.
www.vitrue.com
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