All Things Digital

Spot Runner, the online ad agency, delivered yet another Web 2.0 miracle today, raising another $51 million in funding from a diverse group of investors.

Among other services, Spot Runner makes and places low-cost television and radio ads for small businesses and is trying to bridge the gap between the traditional and online ad market.

In this round, those stepping up to invest in the Los Angeles-based start-up include international media giants Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT.L) and Grupo Televisa (TV), investment company Legg Mason Capital Management (LM) and, curiously, luxury conglomerate Groupe Arnault/LVMH (MC.PA).

This group, along with existing investors, forked over the $51 million to add to the $60 million already raised. This appears to give it a massive valuation of upward of $500 million.

Well, at least in the land of Web 2.0 it does. In the real world, it still remains to be seen. But that has not stopped the nonstop investment party of late for Web 2.0 start-ups.

Web-based instant messaging company Meebo recently raised another $25 million at a reported $250 million valuation, while widgeteer Slide got $50 million for a $550 million valuation.

Of course, the champ of them all has been the social-networking site Facebook, which now has a $15 billion valuation.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Or maybe not so much, but obviously no one in Silicon Valley is listening to BoomTown at this Kool-Aid carnival.

Spot Runner’s previous investors are: Allen & Company, Battery Ventures, Comerica Bank (CMA), Lachlan Murdoch, Vivi Nevo, Capital Research and Management, CBS (CBS), Index Ventures, Interpublic Group, Tudor Investment Corporation and WPP.

So far, this group has invested $60 million in Spot Runner. Its board includes Index’s Danny Rimer and former AOL exec Bob Pittman.

“We want to use the investment to make a real penetration in the market,” said Nick Grouf, chairman and CEO of Spot Runner. “We want to expand both organically and through acquisitions, as well as expand our staff, and these strategic investors will help us do that.”

Spot Runner has already been doing that. For example, it recently bought Weblistic, a local search listings creator, and hired former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford.

The Daily Mail is a large media company based in the United Kingdom, with newspapers, online and radio assets, while Grupo Televisa is one of the largest media conglomerates in the Spanish-speaking world.

Groupe Arnault/LVMH owns some of the world’s toniest brands, including Moët & Chandon, Hennessy, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy.

Grouf, again along with partner David Waxman, also previously founded PeoplePC and Firefly Networks.

In the spirit of the funding, here’s one of my favorite Kool-Aid commercials:

Former Yahoo Senior Vice President Tim Cadogan will take the CEO job at OpenX, the popular open-source ad server start-up, backed by Index Ventures, Accel Partners and others.

As part of the change, the company will move from its London HQ to Los Angeles. OpenX has about 30 employees, including 10 developers in Poland, but not all will be moving West.

Read more »

On the last leg of my trip to Europe to check out Web 2.0 companies, BoomTown spent the day at the Royal Society in the tony environs of St. James’s Park and Pall Mall, for some more lively discussions with more students, academics and entrepreneurs in England.

The Royal Society, by the way, is an “independent scientific academy of the UK and the Commonwealth dedicated to promoting excellence in science.”

In other words: Geek Central of London for more centuries of nerdiness than you can shake a powdered wig at (and, let me just say, there were a lot of powdered wig-wearing techies back when).

As I have written, it’s been a really interesting visit here overall, first at Cambridge University and now here, where a group of entrepreneurs, academics, execs and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley have been mingling with British students, academics and tech entrepreneurs.

It’s all been organized by Ellen Levy of Silicon Valley Connect and U.K.-based tech entrepreneur Sherry Coutu, in partnership with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

So here’s my final video of the events, including interviews with European VC Saul Klein of Index Ventures, as well as Silicon Valley visitors Hans Peter Brondmo of the start-up Plum and Emily Melton, a VC with Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

The conclusion: It’s a small world, after all, as you will see. Also a message from the Queen:

On my journey through the Europe Web scene, a stop at the Paris offices of Netvibes is a must, as it most resembles a Silicon Valley start-up. It has aimed at becoming the personal Web aggregation play and is among the more interesting and entrepreneurial in Europe.

The company was founded by former journalist Tariq Krim in 2005, who ran it with longtime European entrepreneur Pierre Chappaz until he left this past summer to work on another company called Wikio.

Netvibes is funded by the European VCs of Accel Partners and Index Ventures , as well as a smattering of U.S Web players like Marc Andreessen and others, to the tune of about $16 million.

Using a customizable ecosystem that allows a user to include any Web app–such as widgets, feeds, email, videos, blogs and now social-networking apps too–its goal of creating the personalized home page puts it in competition with other sites like Pageflakes, iGoogle and, of course, MyYahoo.

The site has upward of 12,000 feeds of all kinds and about 10 million registered users, aiming to make money via revenue sharing on the various apps used.

The business plan and the whole space, of course, is still developing, as a variety of players compete to become your first stop on the Internet with hopes of finding new ways to monetize that experience.

But here’s Netvibes CEO Krim discussing the whole thing:

Joost, the online video service, is finally out of beta–kind of–with the release of its 1.0 software to anyone who cares to download it and a redesign of both its Web page and search on the service.

The broadband peer-to-peer Internet service, which is trying to popularize a television experience on the Web by providing professionally produced content–complete with network television shows–will remain in beta, although you no longer have to be invited to join.

Presumably, kazillions will now sign up. Or not!

Those who were invited and already using it now get a better interface and a way to find shows that seems more intuitive (the old carousel approach was plainly confusing, so let’s just forget it ever happened).

It will also open its API for third-party apps–in other words, widgetmania continues unabated!

We are no Walt Mossberg, but found the pre-beta version a bit buggy and often annoying, so this is an improvement. Now, bring us more programming we like (and, um, not more of investor CBS’s gross-me-out “CSI”)!

Joost, founded by the founders of the Skype online phone service, is backed by some big players–such as Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures–to the tune of $45 million in funding.

And it also nabbed a popular Silicon Valley player, Mike Volpi, as its CEO.

Here’s a video interview with Volpi, in two parts (Part 1 and Part 2), which I did on a recent trip to Los Angeles, where he was visiting in the vain hope that Hollywood types might suddenly realize the kids love this crazy Internet thing.

Also included is a video I made at Joost’s party in Burbank in June for those same ungrateful entertainment folks.

I like Mike. Volpi, that is, Joost’s new CEO.

Pictured here, the 40-year-old longtime tech exec is a nice choice to run the moderately hyped online video television site.

But I will admit it–I have not been gung-ho on the prospect of Joost–which I have called a potentially “messy control freak of a service.”

I was teasing, of course, but do have doubts about the company–founded by the well-known geek duo Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström–as being too closed and destination oriented, as well as playing in a very crowded field.

In addition, Joost needs massive amounts of cooperation from the very restrictive mandarins of Hollywood. And we all know the amount of leadership they have brought as all content has gone digital–some sum much less than zero.

By the way, Friis and Zennström are the pair who disrupted the phone industry with Skype and also created the controversial peer-to-peer file-sharing service Kazaa, used by many to illegally download–yes–copyrighted entertainment content.

But now in the age of fear and loathing in Hollywood for Google-owned YouTube comes Joost, which aims to deliver a TV experience on the Web with high-quality professional content by using a special player you download. It is free, supported by advertising.

To do this, Joost nabbed $45 million in funding in May from Silicon Valley’s famed Sequoia Capital (backers of Yahoo, YouTube and Google, among others) and early Skype funder Index Ventures, as well as CBS, Viacom and the wealthy Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing.

It has struck deals to offer content, using a peer-to-peer technology distribution system, from CBS, as well as Turner and Warner Bros. and Sony. It has also picked up a slate of big-time advertisers like Coca-Cola. Also, unlike television, it also gives users a bunch of interactive options like instant messaging while viewing and news feeds.

So far, Hollywood likes Joost because, hmm, it’s not copyright-defying YouTube.

But the start-up is not alone. For example, NBC Universal and News Corp. will soon launch a new Web video service called Hulu, in a reported $100 million effort. Also, there’s Veoh, backed by former Hollywood bigwigs Michael Eisner and, recently, Tom Freston.

(At least Joost has this going for it–not such a dopey name as those two! In fact, I like the name a lot.)

And it seems as if a new video site pops up constantly, as every traditional content provider tries to figure out a strategy, even as less cooperative techies like YouTube and Apple’s iTunes grow ever more popular.

So what better place to interview Volpi, a longtime Cisco exec (who was considered the heir apparent to CEO and Chairman John Chambers), than on the trendy Asia de Cuba patio at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Strip.

While Volpi has the tech cred, he is also pretty smooth for Silicon Valley, possessing a bit of Hollywood style and looking hipper than your average nerd (it’s obviously due to his Italian-born roots).

Well-liked and respected in the tech industry, the mechanical engineering grad from Stanford was raised in Japan, where his journalist mother covered a wide range of issues.

Yesterday in Los Angeles to make the rounds at the studios, trying to explain what Joost will do for them, Volpi talked with me about everything from Joost’s prospects to widgetmania to how you create great online content.

He also insulted me, calling me hyped (that’s the digital pot calling the Web kettle black!).

Here’s the first video with the second posted here:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.