welcome to The Future of Online TV
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ww.blinkx.com
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facts and figures
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- 20 million hours of video and still growing... - 250 media partners
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- Enhanced by $150M in R&D over 12 years - Protected by 111 patents
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- 5 million searches per day - 52 million unique visitors per month - 530 million total page views per month
a: di me Web ch ri deo s s Vi re nd d a ad to he TV p t u d ng un ati o r ig e g av th r n m fo ro gy f ilt lo bu hno e c n te gi en tive ch ec ar se t eff ly os on s m e ’ th ld is or kx w in he bl is t it
contents
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about blinkx
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opportunity
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blinkx is a jet engine
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blinkx products and solutions
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blinkx powers the video lifecycle
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blinkx management
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blinkx board of directors
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blinkx in the media
Insert in back of book - blinkx “under the hood�
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This is the era of the Rich Media Web: at our fingertips is the largest repository of connected information in the world, on any subject you could imagine, from myriad sources and now in a vast array of formats. blinkx was built from the ground up to navigate this new universe, and our technology understands video and audio more deeply than any other solution today. Unlike other search engines that were optimized for the narrower dimensions of the Text Web, blinkx is immersed in the Rich Media Web. We use patented speech recognition, conceptual understanding and visual analysis technology to comprehend and harness multimedia online. blinkx is a catalytic force for online television and video. We find and deliver television over the Internet - but we also connect that content with the wealth of information on the Internet, rather than appearing as just another layer floating above it, to add dimension and context to your viewing experience. blinkx unlocks the power of the Web for online television. Suranga Chandratillake founder / Chief Executive Officer
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about blinkx
high-speed access has created unprecedented consumer demand for Internet-distributed Television and Video
about blinkx :
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blinkx is the world’s largest and most most advanced television and video search engine, with an index of 20 million hours of content from over 250 media partners. Founded in 2004 by Suranga Chandratillake, the company completed a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange in May 2007 at a market capitalization of $350m* with headquarters in San Francisco, CA and the UK. > Protected by 111 patents >
20M hours of video indexed and fully searchable
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250+ media partners
blinkx has built a reputation as the Remote Control for Online Television. Today, blinkx offers the world’s largest single index of rich media content on the Web, with partners that include national broadcasters, commercial media giants, and private video libraries. Delivering more content from a broader range of sources than either Google or Yahoo!, blinkx has cemented its position as the premier destination for Online Television.
Pedigree blinkx pioneered video search on the Internet, developing an engine based on technology that was conceived at Cambridge University, enhanced by $150M in R&D over 12 years, and is now protected by 111 patents.
Innovation Unlike other multimedia search engines that attempt to re-purpose technology built for the Text Web, blinkx uses a unique combination of patented conceptual search, speech recognition and video analysis software to efficiently, automatically and accurately find and qualify online video. blinkx continues to pioneer innovative new approaches to digital video distribution in order to ensure it offers the most advanced capabilities and delivers the highest value to its audiences and partners.
Trusted Partner Media Partners: blinkx signed its first media partnership in February 2005, and since then has gone from strength to strength, reaching agreements with over 250 media partners including national broadcasters, commercial media giants, and private video libraries.
Syndication Partners blinkx powers video search for many of the top search providers in the industry, including three of the top five.
* as of May 22nd, 2007
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opportunity
IN DECEMBER 2007, OVER 75% OF US INTERNET USERS WATCHED VIDEO ONLINE (comScore, February 2008)
The Growth of the TELEVISION WEB
Through 2006 and 2007, Internet growth maintained an aggressive pace, with the number of active Internet users in the US alone reaching over 211 million by January 2008 (eMarketer). Globally, Internet usage is growing at a faster rate, as European adoption rates approach US levels and the major Asian markets continue to grow faster still. Significantly, broadband is the fastest growing segment of the Internet. In 2007, US broadband penetration rose to 86% among active Internet users, according to Nielsen NetRatings, and is expected to break 90% by May 2008. Major markets around the world are experiencing similar growth; in the UK, broadband penetration is forecast by eMarketer to reach 77%, or 20 million households, by 2011.
This growth in high-speed access has created unprecedented consumer demand in Internet-distributed rich media, and advertisers and content producers are rapidly diverting focus from text to audio and video content. As online video and television flourishes, its audience is also growing exponentially. In December 2007, more than 75% of of US Internet users watched video online (comScore, February 2008)
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Internet
Advertising Trends
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US online advertising is forecast to reach $61.3BN by 2012 (Forrester Research, 2007) Experts agree that underlying growth in the industry will come mainly from the Internet, and overall, US ad spending is forecast to increase 2.3% in 2008 vs. 18% on the Web (Merrill Lynch, 2008). The Internet is claiming a growing share of advertising at the expense of traditional media, indeed, it is expected to overtake US newspaper advertising by 2011 (Veronis Suhler Stevenson, 2007) and account for 20% of total media budgets in Europe by 2012 (Forrester Research, 2007) Within the online advertising market, the fastest growing and most important segments are search and full-motion video advertising. According to Group M, a subsidiary of WPP, burgeoning online ad spend will pass TV in 2009. US online video advertising is expected to grow 74% during 2008 according to an eMarketer report, surging to US$7.2 billion by 2012 (Forrester). Other research shows that the crucial 18-34 category of consumers now spends more time on the Internet than watching television.
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US online video advertising market to reach $7.2BN by 2012 (Forrester Research, December 2007)
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“[blinkx] could change the future of television viewing” Evening Standard, January 2005
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BLINKX: THE FUTURE OF ONLINE TELEVISION
THE EVOLVING INTERNET: ERA OF ONLINE TELEVISION The aggressive growth of broadband networks across the globe has fanned the flames of demand for multimedia content on the Internet. As cheaper, faster networks become available, more and more of us access the Web through these high bandwidth connections, and are increasingly turning to our computers to watch news, sports and entertainment. The Internet has evolved from a text-based universe to one filled with multimedia. Content producers, from popular user-generated sites, like YouTube, to national broadcasters and commercial media giants, have ushered in the era of the Video Web. As this volume of online video grows exponentially and as the barrier to publishing rich media is lowered, content is hosted on thousands of sites across the Internet. This proliferation demands advanced search functionality: Video Search is the new killer app.
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While other search engines attempt to re-purpose technology built for the Text Web to navigate this new rich media universe, blinkx uses unique, patented and award-winning video and audio analysis technology, to literally watch and listen to rich media online.
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blinkx is a Jet Engine
blinkx technology overview
blinkx is the world’s largest and most advanced video and television search engine. Built from the ground up to address rich media, blinkx understands video more deeply and thoroughly than any other technology available today. To achieve this, blinkx first distills video into its basic building blocks and then processes each component in the method most effective to the medium: audio is processed with speech recognition technology; images are understood using visual analysis technology, and metatags are indexed and extracted by blinkx’s visual spider. Once blinkx has collected the most comprehensive, minutely accurate data possible on the video, its patented Concept Recognition Engine (CoRE) transforms the raw data into useful information, by recognizing ideas and themes within the video. This conceptual intelligence can be used for myriad applications, and to derive maximum value from video assets.
blinkx CoRE is the only technology to harness the full potential of video content.
blinkx CoRE understands video content with unparalleled precision – it can recognize themes, extract concepts and deduce meaning within video.
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blinkx CoRE: The Jet Engine for Video
At the heart of blinkx’s solutions lies technology that has been perfected over 12 years and is protected by 111 patents: the Concept Recognition Engine.
blinkx CoRE understands video content with unparalleled precision – it can recognize themes, extract concepts and deduce meaning within video. CoRE uses a unique combination of Shannon’s Information Theory and Bayesian Inference to apply a probabilistic pattern matching process to the problem of concept matching. CoRE’s approach enables computers to infer meaning within pieces of video and audio content, and reason upon the nature of that meaning in an unstructured way, performing the kinds of organizational, sorting and discovery tasks that today are the domain of manual, human processes. This ability to automate what have previously been expensive and time-consuming manual tasks expands the opportunities for use of video assets and increases their potential value.
blinkx CoRE is the only technology that can recognize ideas, concepts and themes within video, generating ROI by automating processes, reducing costs and increasing the value of assets.
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Products and Solutions
blinkx.com – your Destination for Online TV
blinkx.com gives viewers unparalleled access to more videos than any other site on the Web – all through a single gateway. With an index of over 20 million hours of searchable video and more than 250 partnerships with premier media companies, including national broadcasters, commercial media giants and private video libraries, we have cemented our position as the leading destination for online television.
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Additional Tools blinkx Video Wall The blinkx Video Wall is a large screen that is made up of 25 individual screens, each showing a preview of a different video clip. In this format, you can see more results at a glance than in a text list. You can also embed your customized Video Wall in other Web sites including blogs and personal Web sites. The Video Wall is fed by RSS, so it updates automatically as new search results come in. blinkx it blinkx it is a free, Flash-based plug-in that can be inserted into most standard Web pages, blogs and social network profiles, allowing users to enhance their blogs and Web sites with relevant video streams. Once in place, blinkx it processes the text of selected articles and finds relevant videos that reflect the topics covered in the post. For publishers and bloggers, blinkx it is a simple, automated way to deliver a more compelling online experience with minimal technical and editorial effort. blinkx Playlist The blinkx Playlist lets users drag and drop favorite videos from many different searches into one custom-made playlist. The playlist can be watched in Movie Mode, e-mailed to friends and even made into a wall to embed into blogs. AdHoc Widget The AdHoc Widget leverages blinkx AdHoc, the first contextual advertising platform for online video, giving you the opportunity to make money every time you share a video on your blog, Web site or social networking profile. The embeddable widget automatically matches relevant, in-video text ads to any video that you post, and whenever someone clicks on an ad in your video, we split the revenue with you.
CALLING ALL MEDIA COMPANIES: OUR NETWORK, your AUDIENCE
The Video Clip Seen Around the World
Make Your Videos Available on blinkx.com
A two-time winner of TIME magazine’s “Best of the Web” award and “the fastest growing video spot on the Web” (Compete.com), blinkx processes over five million searches per day, reaching more than 52 million unique visitors and over 530 million page views per month. blinkx.com has also surpassed Google Video in the UK, according to Hitwise (November 2007). In addition, we power video search for more than 50 global syndication partners, including top sites such as Ask.com, Lycos, LookSmart, InfoSpace and the RealPlayer, further extending the reach of blinkx.com to a global audience on the Web
A variety of innovative branding and promotional opportunities are available to highlight and promote blinkx partner content including: > Your own branded player and channel on blinkx.com > Direct links to your channel and latest content on the front page of blinkx.com > Sponsored advertisements against your content when relevant searches are conducted … And Make Money
Searches per day 5+ million Online video advertising spending will reach $7.1 billion by 2012
Unique visitors per month 52+ million
Total page views per month 530+ million
blinkx AdHoc is the first contextual advertising platform for online video, designed to place highly relevant ads against your content.
(Forrester, October 2007)
AdHoc is unique because it leverages blinkx’s patented audio and visual analysis technology to match compelling, customized advertising to audiences on the Video Web, resulting in higher monetization for content owners and a relevant, non-disruptive experience for consumers.
530 Million PAGE VIEWS PER MONTH
Contextual Overlay Banner One of the most unique advantages of blinkx AdHoc’s contextual targeting is the pinpoint accuracy with which we can respond to keywords spoken in a video. In this example, a visitor is searching for videos relevant to energy and environmental themes and has been served a landing page with relevant results. As the voiceover in the video mentions the word “energy” - a keyword selected by the advertiser for their campaign - an overlay banner is triggered. When the visitor clicks on the Contextual Overlay Banner, AdHoc can either play a video ad unit within the player, or take the visitor to the advertiser’s campaign landingpage in a separate window.
Pre-roll with Companion Banner blinkx AdHoc enables you to target Pre-Roll ad units to specific keywords or broader channels. Pre-rolls can be served with or without an optional companion banner. Here, the visitor is searching for sports content that has been targeted by the advertiser. AdHoc loads the Pre-roll and also serves a 300x250 banner unit as an extra branding element and call to action.
blinkx AdHoc: Contextual Advertising for Online TV
Online Video Advertising: A Massive Market Online video advertising is growing exponentially each year – Forrester projects the US market will grow to US$7.1 billion by 2012. And it’s not difficult to see why. Online video presents an extremely attractive opportunity for advertisers and media companies: the engagement power of TV combined with the potential for immediate action and the availability of real-time metrics to assess the effectiveness of a given campaign. Finally, Truly Relevant Advertising Forced to rely entirely on incomplete targeting methods such as demographic information, behavioral data and content genres, advertisers have not been able to match contextually relevant advertising against online video content…until now. It’s what you’ve been waiting for
> Contextual targeting for online TV and video > Premium online video content for your brands > Innovative online video ad formats > An audience of more than 52 million unique visitors per month
ADD RELEVANCE, ADD AUDIENCE, ADHOC blinkx AdHoc is the first contextual advertising platform for online video, designed to place highly relevant advertising against video and TV on the Web. AdHoc is unique because it leverages blinkx’s patented speech recognition and visual analysis technology to understand video more thoroughly than any other service today, and can therefore dynamically place the most pertinent advertising against it. AdHoc matches emotive, compelling TV-style ads to highly relevant online video content, resulting in more effective marketing for advertisers, higher monetization for media partners and, most importantly, an engaging, nondisruptive experience for consumers. AdHoc also offers you the most flexible solution for customizing the timing and appearance of ads within our premium video content, with options that include pre- and post-roll placement as well as dynamically-selected in-video mini-banners. This is an exciting prospect, not only in terms of enhancing viewer experience, but also in increasing the effectiveness of campaigns. The good stuff And rest assured, the ads will only be placed against online video content from top media companies and premium niche publishers including Reuters, CBS, EuroNews and the New York Times and CelebTV. In addition, blinkx powers video search for more than 50 global distribution partners, including sites such as Ask.com, Lycos, Looksmart, Infospace and the RealPlayer, thereby increasing the reach of blinkx. com.
Branded Player The Branded Player ad unit enables you to engage the blinkx audience by incorporating your brand into the video player itself for specific keyword searches or channel navigation. This can take the form of graphical elements surrounding the player, or logo placements within the player, or both.
Roadblocks The two or three banner Roadblock unit allows you to effectively “own� Channel landing pages within blinkx. Select which Channels you want to serve your choice of two or three banners, and when visitors select these Channels from the blinkx homepage, your Roadblock ad units will appear around the player.
Sponsored Search AdHoc’s Sponsored Search unit gives you the top position within blinkx’s search results page for a given list of keywords, and is a particularly effective vehicle for seeding viral video campaigns. In this example, the advertiser wants a viral clip to appear for searches related to the movie “I Am Legend”. The visitor enters their search and is taken to the results page. The Sponsored Search content is clearly identified in a yellow box and autoplays before the first results clip. Once the Sponsored Search finishes playing, the regular results clips begin.
Microsite blinkx can also create Microsites for a totally exclusive and immersive branding experience. We work with our advertisers to create the appropriate look and feel for the site, as well as agree on the content and advertising that will appear. AdHoc sends visitors to the Microsite via targeted banner
units appearing on Channel homepages and triggered by selected keywords.
blinkx BBTV: The future of Television
Welcome to the Future of Television: blinkx BBTV Until now, Online Television has simply used the Internet as a new distribution mechanism and while there may be some value in that, it doesn’t exploit its true potential: The Web is the largest repository of connected information in the world - on any subject you could imagine – from myriad sources. blinkx Broadband Television (BBTV) finds and delivers television over the Internet - but it also connects that TV with the wealth of information on the Internet, rather than appearing as just another layer floating above it. BBTV weaves TV into the Web, rather than just pushing it through the same pipes. Leveraging hybrid peer-to-peer streaming and a dynamic channel interface, blinkx BBTV delivers true Internet Television: full-screen, on-demand and instant TV quality video over the Web. FOR AUDIENCES: Key Features of blinkx BBTV Finally, a TV-like experience on your time, your terms and straight from your PC! blinkx BBTV combines the convenience of the Internet – instant, on-demand and highly interactive content – with what you love most about your television: fullscreen viewing, a simple user interface and programming delivered at a high frame rate.
Personalized Channel-based Viewing Your library of premium programming can now be organized and viewed based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a food channel to capture and display all of your food-related videos. Streaming and Download Modes blinkx BBTV offers you two modes of content delivery: streaming and download. The streaming mode allows you to view your video as it is being sent to your computer. The download option, on the other hand, requires a full transfer of the program onto your PC before you can view it, but this often results in a higher quality viewing experience. The ability to switch between the two modes means you can enjoy your entertainment on your own terms and when it’s most convenient for you. Navigate with Search Tool Leveraging our patented search technology, blinkx BBTV provides you with an unprecedented level of interaction with your entertainment. Leveraging our patented search technology, blinkx BBTV provides you with an unprecedented level of interaction with your entertainment. blinkx’s patented video indexing automatically creates a speech track of every show, allowing you to search through content, literally word-for-word, and jump to specific points in a program, simply by searching for the spoken word.
DRM
As a distribution channel, blinkx is committed to protecting your content. Your video is completely protected by blinkx’s DRM system, which uses the standard for the industry, Windows DRM.
For Media Partners:
For AUDIENCES:
For Advertisers:
Our Expertise, Your Advantage blinkx BBTV is an entirely new way for you to connect with your audience through the Internet. With full-screen, high-quality streaming through a proprietary, DRMcompliant peer-to-peer network, you can finally showcase your programming the way it was meant to be displayed.
Various Monetization Opportunities You choose how to monetize your content. Many opportunities exist including advertising, pay to download, pay to own and pay to rent.
Premium Content for Your Premium Brands blinkx BBTV brings you the best of TV and the Internet: the engagement power of TV combined with the potential for immediate action and the availability of real-time metrics to assess the effectiveness of a given campaign.
Hybrid Peer-to-peer Network Hybrid peer-to-peer streaming enables you to leverage our network and peer-to-peer distribution to disperse the burden of content delivery. As your content gains popularity, the audience base will become large enough to sustain itself, thereby ensuring more effective use of Internet resources and decreasing your overall cost of distribution
Digital Rights Management (DRM) As a distribution channel, blinkx is committed to protecting your content. Your video is completely protected by blinkx’s DRM system, which uses the standard for the industry, Windows DRM. Our systems ensure that your video content will only play on the machine onto which it is downloaded. If the provider has placed a time restriction on the content, then this will also be respected and the content deleted when it has expired.
BBTV is fully integrated with blinkx AdHoc, which is designed to place highly relevant advertising against video content on the Web. Since blinkx understands video more thoroughly than any other service today, serving your ads through AdHoc results in more effective marketing for you and, most importantly, an engaging, non-disruptive experience for consumers. AdHoc also offers you the most flexible solution for customizing the timing and appearance of ads within our premium video content, with options that include pre-roll placement, dynamically-selected in-video mini-banners and a catalog of your ads at the end of the program, giving viewers the opportunity to peruse your offerings at their leisure. This is an exciting prospect, not only in terms of enhancing viewer experience, but also in increasing the effectiveness of campaigns.
blinkx Powers the Video Lifecycle
The Web presents a wealth of exciting opportu足nities for publishers with video assets, but it also poses significant technical challenges. Identifying the fuzzy content of footage and understanding what it means are only some of the most fundamental challenges in processing video of all size and formats. There are other critical steps, each of which plays an important role in enabling a large audience to interact efficiently with a massive archive of content that covers multiple subjects. Feel like this might be an insurmountable task?
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Locate Process Index Control Monetize Deliver
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1. Locate
3. Index
5. Monetize
Content lives in many different places, both in the digital domain of the Internet and stored in content management systems, but also offline as tapes, disks and broadcast signals. Before any processing can occur, it is essential to locate the content, identify it and extract it from its current storage or packaging.
Once your videos have been processed, the results of the analysis performed on each piece of content – which originates from multiple sources and covers a wide array of subject matters – are combined into a single data track and moved to a centralized repository called the blinkx Index to make it accessible through a single gateway.
To help you capitalize on your video index, blinkx AdHoc automatically and intelligently matches compelling, customized, TV-style ads to your content.
Our blinkx distributed Video Fetch Server (dVFS) technology will help you locate video that is contained in digital repositories, and the offline Video Fetch Server (oVFS) can extract analog content from non-digital sources including tape, disk and broadcast systems
2. Process Content that has been identified and collected must next be processed. The blinkx VideoLogger analyzes all of your video content to better understand the footage, from readily accessible information in the form of titles, summaries and closed captioning, to more advanced processes such as speech and visual analysis.
4. Control Finally, you have an intelligent inventory of video assets that you can now mine and leverage to better serve your audiences. The blinkx Application Programming Interface (API) offers you a wide range of tools to deliver your videos to viewers including keyword, conceptual and parametric search.
Our platform ensures that only the most relevant advertising is placed against your content, resulting in higher monetization for you, more effective marketing for advertisers and, most importantly, a relevant, non-disruptive experience for your viewers.
6. Deliver When the content and advertising have been selected and packaged, they are then delivered to the viewer. blinkx provides peer-to-peer streaming and download technology that not only support DRM-protected content, but also vastly improve the efficiency of delivery, while dramatically reducing the cost of transmission to you.
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Combined with explicit and implicit profiling and community features, you can further define and tailor how your content is discovered and showcased.
You choose how to monetize your content. Many opportunities exist including advertising, pay to download, pay to own and pay to rent.
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blinkx Management
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Suranga Chandratillake Founder Chief Executive Officer
Matthew Service Chief Financial Officer
A technology entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in next-generation search, Suranga Chandratillake founded blinkx in 2004 and launched the company in 2005. After early success, Suranga took blinkx public on the London Stock Exchange in May 2007. Prior to founding blinkx, Suranga was US CTO of Autonomy Corporation, responsible for growing Autonomy’s research and development division in the United States. Before joining Autonomy, Suranga held a variety of roles in technology, sales and marketing at Morgan Stanley, netdecisions and anondesign. Suranga received his MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge. A highly regarded expert on the convergence of the Web and TV, including the future of television, interactive TV and online advertising, Suranga is often invited to speak at leading industry events including MIT’s Emerging Technologies Conference, DLD Conference and Monaco Media Forum. Suranga was recognized as a Power Player in Billboard magazine’s 30 Under 30, and The Observer identified him as one of the top 10 leaders in Science and Innovation in their Future 500. Suranga was also named the DEMOgod Winner of DEMO Conference 2007.
Prior to joining blinkx in 2006, Matthew Service was a principal at Regent Pacific Management Corporation. During this time, Matt worked on 34 engagements and held a variety of roles for software and technology companies including director of Client Services and Operations for MicroEdge Inc., a division of Advent Software; COO and CFO of KTEH; director of IT for Clarent Corporation; and director of IT for Auspex Systems. From 1996 to 1998, Matt was the operations manager for NZG Specialties. Matt holds a B.A. in Business Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Matthew Scheybeler Chief Technology Officer
Federico Grosso Senior Vice President Global Sales and Business Development
Matthew Scheybeler joined blinkx in 2004 as a technical director. He began his career at Autonomy Corporation, where he spent three years, advancing from programmer to team leader. While at Autonomy, Matt became highly proficient in rich media-related technology. Prior to joining blinkx, he founded his own consultancy firm, Automatic Software, where he worked with a variety of mobile and enterprise search companies. Matt studied Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Federico Grosso is directly responsible for blinkx’s revenue generation efforts as well as the day-to-day operations of the company’s sales organization. Since joining blinkx in 2004, Federico and his team have created more than 250 partnerships with top media companies. Prior to joining blinkx, he held several positions within Yahoo! including the start-up of Yahoo! Italia and the launch of the European Commercial Team. Federico received his BA in Political Sciences from the University of Torino, Italy, and he has also completed the Emerging Leaders Program in General Management at the London Business School.
62 Julia Blystone Chief Marketing Officer
Frances Smith Finance Director
Onil Gunawardana Vice President General Manager, Advertising
Julia Blystone joined blinkx in 2007 with more than 12 years of previous experience in communications. Prior to joining blinkx, Julia was a vice president at OutCast Communications, a leading public relations firm, where she worked with a wide variety of high-tech companies including Autodesk, blinkx, Good Technology, and Wyse Technology. Julia also managed public relations for portal software vendor Epicentric, and ran public relations for Compaq’s telecommunications division while working at Blanc & Otus. Julia graduated cum laude from Middlebury College.
Frances Smith joined blinkx in 2007. Prior to joining blinkx, Frances served as the vice president of Corporate Affairs for Autonomy Corporation. Frances also held the role of financial director at a number of early stage venture-backed technology companies including Neurodynamics Ltd. and Nholdings Ltd. After completing her training as a chartered accountant in 1991, she worked in the corporate finance department of PricewaterhouseCoopers (Coopers & Lybrand) from 1992 to 1996.
Onil Gunawardana leads blinkx’s initiatives in advertising. Prior to joining blinkx, Onil was the COO/VP of Products at Searchforce which provides a Search Engine Marketing platform. He also managed the Marketing products in the Media vertical at Siebel, where he developed an advertising server. Earlier in his career, he was a strategy consulting case team leader advising technology companies at the Monitor Group. Onil holds a BsC in Electrical Engineering from Yale, a MsC in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, where his research focused on transmitting video through public networks, and a MBA from the Harvard Business School.
blinkx Board of Directors
Anthony Bettencourt Non-executive Chairman
Dr Michael Lynch Non-executive Director
Mark Opzoomer Non-executive Director
Anthony Bettencourt is currently serving as an entrepreneur-in-residence at US Venture Partners in Menlo Park, CA. Prior to USVP, Anthony was CEO of Verity, where he was responsible for driving business growth from $15 million in annual revenues to more than $140 million between 1995 to 2006. A veteran of the enterprise search market, Anthony led the team that set the strategic direction and execution characteristics of Verity, resulting in the company being acquired for more than $500 million at the end of 2005. In 2005, Anthony was awarded the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for software and technology in the Silicon Valley. Anthony serves as a judge for the Valley’s well known Tech Awards, is a mentor for Santa Clara University’s Global Social Benefit Incubator Program, and is an honorary committee member of The Silicon Valley Challenge Summit. He serves on the Board of Directors of Avolent as well as on the Board of Directors of the non-profit Alameda County Meals on Wheels. Anthony attended Santa Clara University.
Dr. Mike Lynch, OBE, founded Autonomy in 1996 and rapidly established the company’s reputation as the world’s leading provider of infrastructure software for unstructured information and meaning-based technologies. Prior to Autonomy, Mike founded and ran Neurodynamics where much of Autonomy’s proprietary technology was developed. December 2005 saw Autonomy’s $500 million acquisition of former competitor Verity, which consolidated Autonomy’s position as number one in the market. That same year, Autonomy also posted record revenues and profits in what Mike described as a transformational year. Mike is a past winner of the CBI’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was recently appointed a non-executive director of the BBC. Mike studied Electrical and Information Sciences at The University of Cambridge, England, and received a Ph.D. in adaptive techniques in signal processing and connectionist models, as well as a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition. He holds the Institute of Electrical Engineers’ medal for Outstanding Achievement.
Mark Opzoomer advises a number of media/technology companies on strategic and operational issues. From July 2001 to December 2003, Mark served as European managing director and regional vice president of Yahoo! Europe. During this time, Mark restructured the business to make it more profitable, restarted growth and aligned resources with California. From 1995 to 2001, Mark held a variety of senior management roles including chairman of Xtempus Limited and deputy chief executive of Hodder Headline plc. From 1988 through 1994, Mark also served in various positions with the Virgin Group and Sega Europe, where he was a key member of the management team that grew Sega Europe to $1 billion in sales and market leadership across Europe. Mark holds an MBA from IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland, and a Bachelor of Commerce, Honours, from Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. In 1995, Mark also completed the London and Wharton Business Schools’ Directors Forum, a program for public company directors.
BLINKX IN THE MEDIA
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“Both the contextual ad and video search spaces are growing increasingly crowded. Players recognize these are 3 interrelated Achilles heels of the current broadband video model: users finding desired content, content providers getting paid for their work and advertisers getting sufficient and well-targeted industry. blinkx seems well-positioned to address all three.” Will Richmond, VideoNuze (December 2007)
“There’s also a real possibility that AdHoc ads may be better matches to the content than what Google coughs up. Yes, Google spiders websites efficiently, but blinkx is the one with the video search advantage.” Rick Aristotle Munarriz, The Motley Fool (October 10, 2007)
“blinkx’s special sauce - something even Google doesn’t have - is software that can turn speech into text and count how many times a word pops up in a video. This is very useful to anyone selling targeted ads for, say, Junior Mints.” Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 (August 21, 2007)
“blinkx faces some formidable challengers: Google and Yahoo have not given up on video search. But video is a different beast than the rest of the Web, and Blinkx has shown that it knows how to hunt it.” Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 (August 21, 2007)
“The Blinkx search tool is far superior to anything else in the market, searching as it does through moving images for facial recognition, place names or words on the screen, and listening to the accompanying audio track for key words, rather than just searching by tags attached to videos.
“the fledgling video search has a lot going for it, and even beats out Google in some important ways….” Doug Caverly, WebPro News (May 16, 2007)
If, however, Blinkx remains independent, it is streets ahead of the competition in a market that looks set to explode this year.” Josephine Moulds, Telegraph (August 10, 2007)
“there are some areas where I think Google’s results may not match all its competitors. For instance Google is indexing Google Video, YouTube, Metacafe and a few other video search sites, but don’t match the video search of a site like Blinkx.” Michael Miller, PC Magazine (May 16, 2007)
“You hear about a video—say, a clip of Japanese stage performers acting out a slow-motion food fight —and with a quick keyword search, you have your choice of links to where to view it. That is the beauty of Blinkx, a video search engine that keeps adding new tricks to its repertoire, like the clickable video wall that you can embed in your blog.” Maryanne Buechner, Time (July 2007)
“Blinkx provides the critical link between the consumer and the fragmented online content industry. Unlike other text-based technologies that use often misleading text tags attached to the descriptions of videos, Blinkx’s platform can comprehend what is in the video clip and thus deliver more accurate results to the user.” Nic Fildes, the Independent (June 25, 2007)
“blinkx is a video search engine that indexes words and images within videos, as well as associated tags. Put simply, its search functions are better than either YouTube’s or Google’s own homegrown video search. blinkx and Autonomy’s Idol software that powers it have beaten Google to the punch on video search” Stephen Wellman, InformationWeek (May 23, 2007)
“If you want to find some relevant video information on the Web then Blinkx is it. Microsoft and Google just don‘t seem able to do it,“ said London-based technology analyst Derek Brown, at broker Seymour Pierce.” Daniel Thomas, Dow Jones Newswires (May 8, 2007)
“James McQuivey, principal analyst at Forrester Research, says that Blinkx, which was formed in 2004, has managed to get the edge in the video search market, and that even Google doesn‘t have the same functionality.” Daniel Thomas, Dow Jones Newswires, May 8, 2007
BLINKX IN THE MEDIA
“Some searches are focusing on market segments. For example, if you are looking for a particular video clip, Blinkx (blinkx.com) delivers unrivalled results.” Paul Taylor, Financial Times (March 30, 2007)
“Mr. Chandratillake’s solution does not reject any existing video search methods, but supplements them by transcribing the words uttered in a video, and searching them. This is an achievement: effective speech recognition is a “nontrivial problem,” in the language of computer scientists.” Jason Pontin, New York Times (February 25, 2007)
“One of the highest-profile players in the burgeoning video-search business, blinkx offers both a site and a technology for other sites to license so Web users can quickly sift through and find the videos they want.” Daisy Whitney, TVWeek.com (December 4, 2006)
“Blinkx.tv, a popular San Francisco-based video-search service, launched a Web site that makes it easier for users to scan and sort through video-search results.” Jessica E. Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal (October 12, 2006)
“Many in the search business think metadata will be enough to satisfy a general search audience, but a handful of players are moving beyond tags to analyze what‘s inside moving and still images. Blinkx is developing a video searcher that uses speech-recognition software that “listens„ to streaming video.” Victoria Murphy Barret and Allison Fass, Forbes (October 2, 2006)
“By teaming up with Blinkx, [Lycos] offer[s] visitors one of the top video search engines available on the web today.” Paul Taylor, Financial Times (August 29, 2006)
“Fed up with the quality of scheduled TV programming? Or maybe you‘re an avid user of Web video sites but looking for something a bit more meaningful than the latest wacky Webcam download. Consider blinkx.tv. We‘re taking a closer look at it as part of a series on Web sites that specialize in video distribution, sales, downloading -- or a combination of all three. Blinkx.tv measures up well.” Ian Sager, BusinessWeek (August 23, 2006)
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USA Office
San Francisco One Market Plaza Spear Tower, 19th Floor San Francisco CA 94105 USA Tel: +1 (415) 848 2986 info@blinkx.com UK Office
London 105 Piccadilly London, W1J 7NJ UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 8906 6857