PRESS RELEASE: Branded Video Shared Socially Leads To Better Recall And Awareness, Says New Research

Viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad’s message if a branded video has been recommended to them, according to new research commissioned by award-winning social video platform Unruly.

The survey, conducted by Decipher Research to measure the effectiveness of social video advertising, found that social recommendations had a direct impact on traditional brand metrics and ad enjoyment.

In particular:

• Brand recall and brand association rose 7 percent among viewers who had been recommended the videos versus viewers who found it by browsing;

• 73 percent of respondents who viewed a recommended video recalled the brand when prompted versus 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video directly;

• There was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing;

• People who enjoyed a video were 97 percent more likely to purchase the product featured in the video.

The study, which surveyed online video viewers, aged 18-34, across four social video campaigns from top FMCG brands Guinness, Coca-Cola, Unilever’s Cornetto and Energizer Batteries from July to November 2011, sought to determine the impact of peer recommendations.

“Social video is a powerful format for engaging consumers. If a brand creates great video content and makes it easy to share, it will see impressive results across the entire purchase funnel,” said Unruly COO Sarah Wood.

The survey, organised in conjunction with the brands’ agency partners Carat, Vizeum, Mindshare and MEC, will be issued today in a white paper titled “Social Ad Effectiveness: An Unruly Whitepaper” and was part of a presentation at the iStrategy conference in San Francisco on February 1 by Art Zeidman, Unruly’s President, Americas.

To download a free copy of the white paper, please visit: http://unr.ly/w9jyNn.

Survey Methodology

Unruly commissioned leading research company Decipher to determine a methodology and execute this study. Data was gathered from July to November 2011 across four social video campaigns from top FMCG brands Guinness, Coca-Cola, Unilever’s Cornetto and Energizer Batteries. Viewers could opt in to the survey directly from an annotation within the Unruly video player or from the video’s YouTube page.

The data gathered from viewers following a recommendation was compared with that of viewers who had arrived at the video by browsing, to determine the effects of recommendations on brand metrics and post viewing behaviour. 976 surveys were completed. 

BUSINESS INSIDER: Unruly Media Just Closed A $25 Million Round

Unruly Media has closed a $25 million Series A funding round.

Investors include Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers, and The British Growth Fund.

Unruly is behind a video platform that has delivered 1.34 billion video views and carried out more than 1,400 video campaigns for brands like T-Mobile, Adidas, and Old Spice since its founding in 2006.

For the full article, click here.

FINANCIAL TIMES: Viral Marketer Unruly Raises $25m

Unruly, an online video marketing company that has helped to propel viral hits such as the Evian roller-skating babies and T-Mobile’s royal wedding spoof to millions of views, has raised $25m (£16m) in venture funding to accelerate growth and international expansion.

The investment comes from European firms Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and Business Growth Fund, after Unruly turned down approaches from several US venture groups.

For the full article, click here.

LUXURY DAILY: Cartier Markets Love Collection Through Email, Microsite

Jeweler Cartier is continuing the push of its “how far would you go for love” campaign and its “love” collection with a new microsite and email marketing.

The label has placed its previously-released “how far would you go for love” video featuring French brand Air on an interactive microsite. 

For the full article, click here.

REEL SEO: Eyeview Raises Over $5 Million, Personalized Video Ads Will Be Your Future

Advertisers' main goal in online video is getting a relevant ad to the right kind of video so that the audience is more likely to watch it. 

Another goal is to make an ad that can be shown all over the country (or world) but have specific information exclusive to each city. 

The way an advertiser does that on TV is to make however many versions of that ad with new text that is needed. 

For the full article, click here.

Investor Space: Unruly Media CEO Talks About Raising $25M

While Europe might be mired in economic problems, a growing entrepreneurial community still exists.

Just look at Scott Button. Based in the U.K., he sold ad-serving operator Connextra in 2006. That same year, he launched another company — Unruly Media — and currently serves as its CEO. Unruly Media recently snagged $25 million in funding, and I (Tom Taulli) had a chance to interview Button about his entrepreneurial efforts.

For the full article, click here.

REUTERS: Viral Spiral Propels Unruly Media

Remember the captive audience? Well, a good deal of those eyeballs are looking at the internet now, where videos are being shared and 'liked' like never before.

Case in point. This TV ad for Volkswagen made a big impression when it aired during the Super Bowl early in 2011.

It also turned out to be the most successful social video of the year according to Unruly Media. What is Social Video? Well, think viral videos but produced with brand promotion as the underlying intent. Co-founder and chief operating officer Sarah Wood says this graphic, dubbed the Viral Spiral demonstrates how consumers are increasingly willing to engage with branded videos.

To watch the video click here.

FORBES: Gunning for the $100B Social Video Space

When Scott Button sold his ad serving firm in 2006, he could have taken some time off.  Instead, he put $500,000 of his money into a new start-up called Unruly Media — a process he called “scary.”

But since then, the company has been on a growth ramp. Button realized the market for social video would be huge, and he discussed this with me in a recent interview.

As a sign of Unruly Media’s success, the company recently snagged its first round of outside capital: $25 million. The investors included Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and the Business Growth Fund.

Unruly’s technology platform is called RAMP (Real-time Amplification and Measurement Platform), and it helps major brands deliver effective social video campaigns. The audience amounts to about 725 million monthly unique users across channels like Facebook, Google’s (Nasdaq:GOOG) YouTube and Twitter. As for clients, they include biggies like Electronic Arts (Nasdaq:ERTS), adidas and Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO).

For the full article, click here.

Unruly Secures $25m In Funding From Leading Technology Investors

Funding to fuel global expansion of the social video sector’s most innovative technology company

NEW YORK AND LONDON—January 4, 2012—Unruly, the award-winning global technology platform for social video advertising, today announced a $25 million Series A investment from Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and Business Growth Fund. The financing is the largest ever for a private company in the social video space and will be used to accelerate international growth and cement Unruly’s position as the global leader in this fast-growing area.

With a revenue run-rate approaching $50 million (2011 full year revenue $25 million) and profitable since 2009, Unruly has 100 staff across nine offices and is doubling in size each year. The company has delivered a number of high profile social video campaigns for global brands, including Evian’s “Roller Babies,” T-Mobile’s “Life's for Sharing,” Coca Cola’s “Happiness Factory” series and Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign.

Across the industry, social video campaigns generated 2.7 billion views in 2010, more than 8 billion views in 2011 and are predicted to generate 20 billion views in 2012.

Brands and agencies have quickly recognized the power of social video to make an emotional connection with their audience, influence consumers and ignite conversations. However, media fragmentation and device proliferation make it extremely difficult to do this at the scale they require. Unruly solves this problem by providing a truly global media and technology platform for social video advertising that reaches 725 million people across 74 countries.

“Today represents an important milestone for the company and social video as a whole,” said Unruly founder and Group CEO Scott Button. “Five years ago, we set out to help brands capture the massive opportunity in social video and we’re delighted that such a distinguished group of investors share our conviction.”

Since Unruly’s inception in London in 2006, the company has delivered, tracked and audited 1.34 billion user-intended video views and executed 1,400+ successful social video campaigns for some of the world’s leading global brands, including Old Spice, Electronic Arts, adidas, Unilever, T-Mobile and Coca-Cola.

“Unruly’s proprietary technology platform and aggressive global growth strategy in a fast-growing market is really impressive,” said Richard Anton, Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners. “We are delighted to be supporting the company build on its success, bringing our experience of building a number of international marketing and advertising technology companies, including Celltick, ComQi and EPiServer.”

“With global online ad spend set to reach $110 billion by 2014 and online video ad spend predicted to be the fastest growing category, we believe Unruly is strongly positioned to be the winner in the global social video market,” said Martijn Hamann, Partner of Van den Ende & Deitmers.

“In a short space of time, Unruly has played a major role in the explosive growth of social video and this investment gives it additional firepower,” said Marion Bernard, Regional Director of BGF. “We look forward to working with the company and our co-investors to take advantage of the very significant global expansion opportunities. BGF is working in partnership with other investors to expand the pool of investment capital to growing and ambitious UK companies as a key part of developing the entrepreneurial economy”

Unruly’s proprietary social video technology powers the entire social video campaign lifecycle and their Viral Video Chart is widely recognized as the Billboard Hot 100 of the Internet generation. Unruly is a whitelisted Facebook partner and its video ad charts are syndicated to major outlets, including Mashable, The Guardian, Adweek, Die Welt and the IAB.

Torch Partners and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP advised on the deal.

About Unruly

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in London, Unruly is the global platform for social video advertising. With offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Sydney, Unruly has delivered, tracked and audited 1.34 billion video views and executed 1,400+ successful social video campaigns for global brands and agencies including T-Mobile’s acclaimed Life's for Sharing series, Evian's global Roller Babies hit, Old Spice’s game-changing “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign and Coke’s Happiness series. In 2011, the company received several prestigious business awards, including the UK National Business Awards’ "Growth Strategy of the Year" and the Chamber Awards’ “UK Business of the Year.” Founder and Group CEO Scott Button was also named "Digital Innovator of the Year" by the Growing Business Awards and COO Sarah Wood was crowned “Female Entrepreneur of the Year” award by the Fast Growth Business Awards.

Reaching an audience of 725 million monthly unique users, Unruly distributes social video campaigns across platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, premium publisher sites, influential blogs and mobile applications. For more information, visit www.unrulymedia.com.

About Amadeus Capital Partners

Amadeus Capital Partners is one of Europe's leading technology venture capital firms, with £500m under management. Since its inception in 1997, the firm has backed nearly 70 companies in industries that include communications and networking hardware and software, cleantech, medtech, computer hardware and software, media, and e-commerce.  Major businesses built by the firm include CSR plc (LSE:CSR), the leading producer of single chip bluetooth radios for short range connections, Solexa Ltd, the developer of next generation genetic analysis systems, merged into Illumina, Inc. (ILMN) to create the world-leader in gene-sequencing technology and Transmode, a networking solutions business that had an over-subscribed IPO on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm in May 2011.  For more information, please visit www.amadeuscapital.com.

About Van den Ende & Deitmers

Van den Ende & Deitmers is the venture capital firm of Endemol founder Joop van den Ende and former Endemol board member Hubert Deitmers. The firm invests in European crossmedia enterprises that have the potential to grow internationally. Its focus is on Content, Platforms, E-commerce and related ICT services. Since the firm was established in 2006, it has invested in a variety of companies, including casual gaming platform Spil Games (number 1 worldwide), television producer Eyeworks (top 5 independent producer worldwide), online market research agency Metrixlab (top 5 worldwide) and online video advertising company Smartclip (number 1 in Europe, now part of Adconion). Last months, it invested in Improve Digital, Pictura and Quadia. Social network Hyves (number 1 in The Netherlands), contact centre Unamic/HCN (top 3 in Europe), online photoalbum producer Albumprinter (top 3 in Europe) and ICT hard- & software webshop CentralPoint (no 1 in The Netherlands) were successfully sold recently. For more information, visit www.endeit.com.

About Business Growth Fund

Business Growth Fund has been established to help Britain’s fast growing smaller and medium sized businesses.  Growth potential is the key criteria. BGF will invest between £2m and £10m per business in return for a minimum 10 per cent equity stake and a seat on the board for a BGF director. It will provide long-term equity investment for those growing companies that today do not have access to this source of capital.  As such BGF hopes to be a catalyst for growth among smaller UK companies.

BGF is an independent company with capital of up to £2.5 billion, backed by five of the UK’s main banking groups - Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, and Standard Chartered.  BGF is managed completely autonomously with an independent management team. For more information, visit www.businessgrowthfund.co.uk.

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Press Contacts:

Kayla Zerby

The Morris + King Company for Unruly
(212) 561-7454
kayla.zerby@morris-king.com

Chantal Ligertwood

Amadeus Capital Partners Limited

+44 (0)1235 834 091

chantal@ligertwood.net

Wendy Horlings

Van den Ende & Deitmers

+31-20 794 77 77

wendy.horlings@endeit.com

Emily Weston

Equity Dynamics for Business Growth Fund

+44 (0)7825 326 442

emily@equitydynamics.co.uk

MARKETING: Social Video Explodes As Brands 'Become Friends' With Consumers

Social video sharing has experienced massive growth over the past five years, as shown by the 'Viral Spiral' infographic created by social video specialist Unruly.

Social video: sharing soars as brands become friends with consumers

Since 2006, when the most-shared video was Unilever's 'Dove Evolution', there has been a 20-fold increase in the sharing of branded content.

Even over the last year, the increase is significant. In 2010, the top 20 most-shared videos generated five million shares (5,302,340) and 205,850,936 views. 

In 2011, the top 20 ads generated 25 million shares (24,599,860), nearly a five-fold increase from 2010 levels. Views rose to 236,451,183.

For the full article, click here.