FreeWheel raises $16.8 Million

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San Mateo: Video monetization technology company FreeWheel has closed $16.8 million from the new investor Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with The Walt Disney Company, along with the participation of the existing investors - Turner Broadcasting System, Battery Ventures and Foundation Capital. Concurrent with this investment, Dan Beldy, Managing Director of Steamboat Ventures will join Trish Jones of Turner Broadcasting to sit on FreeWheel's Board of Directors. "We are honored to add Steamboat Ventures to our esteemed investor set," said Doug Knopper, Co-founder and Co-CEO of FreeWheel. "We've grown faster than anyone predicted and added amazing clients along the way - some of the largest media companies in the world. We believe we can ultimately monetize content that runs on every platform and every screen. It's an incredibly exciting time for us and we're proud of this showing of support." The new funds from this strategic institutional funding will enable FreeWheel to further scale its infrastructure to support new and existing clients, expand that infrastructure globally, and continue to innovate with new products to solve the converging video industry's biggest pain points. Also, Diya Jolly is the Vice President, Product Management of the company who is responsible for FreeWheel's partner management, data and analytics, and revenue management product offerings. The San Mateo based FreeWheel's technology enables global media companies and content distributors to effectively manage ad sales rights, produce accurate inventory forecasts for live or on demand content, deliver a yield-optimized set of ads, and analyze video business performance. With the latest version of its flagship product, Monetization Rights Management, the company offers capabilities developed to address TV Everywhere initiatives, including advanced commercial break pattern management. FreeWheel has added numerous media clients in the past year, including Turner, VEVO, MLB.com, and Discovery Communications. Since it was founded in 2007, FreeWheel has rapidly scaled to serve over two billion ad impressions per month and recently launched the PAVE Initiative, a partner program representing systems integrations with over 70 companies in the digital video space. FreeWheel has grown to over 90 full time employees with offices in San Mateo, New York, and Beijing. FreeWheel's progress over the last two years optimizing the global management and monetization of online premium video has been tremendous," said Dan Beldy, Managing Director of Steamboat Ventures. "They have built a differentiated service uniquely suited to premium publishers. Digital video ad serving and ad rights management is a growing market with enormous potential, especially as television content becomes increasingly portable. FreeWheel has the right platform to meet the advertising needs of its major media clients, and we are excited to be working with them."

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