Ex.co

Last updated
EX.CO
FormerlyPlaybuzz
Founded2012
FoundersTom Pachys, Shaul Olmert, Shachar Orren
Headquarters
New York City
Key people
Tom Pachys, CEO [1]
Shachar Orren, CMO
Maya Szutan-Azoulay, COO
Yaniv Lubinski, CFO
Oren Regev, Chief Product Officer
Efrat Zohar Reisman, Chief People Officer
Website ex.co

EX.CO is a Disney-backed, [2] publisher-first video technology platform. [3] It is used by publishers to monetize video content on websites and to add interactive and media elements intended for a particular user base.

Contents

History

EX.CO was originally founded as Playbuzz in 2012 by Shaul Olmert and Tom Pachys. Pachys is a graduate of IDC and also the co-founder of Whimado.

Playbuzz originally raised $3 million in a Series A funding round from Carmel Ventures. [4]

In September 2017, the company announced it had raised an additional $35 million in a Series C funding round led by Viola Group with participation from existing investors including the Walt Disney Company and Saban Ventures. [5] [6] This brought Playbuzz's total funding to $66 million. [7]

In November 2019, Playbuzz changed its company name to EX.CO. [8]

Acquisitions

In 2021, EX.CO acquired video monetization technology company Cedato. [9]

In 2022, the company announced the acquisition of the machine-learning company Bibblio. [10]

Products

EX.CO provides website development tools centered around interactive elements.

EX.CO also works with e-commerce businesses for website building, and modification of existing sites. [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

Dotdash Meredith is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, home, food, finance, tech, beauty, lifestyle, travel, and education. It operates brands including Verywell, Investopedia, People, The Balance, Byrdie, MyDomaine, Brides, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Liquor.com, Lifewire, TripSavvy, TreeHugger, and ThoughtCo. In August 2012, About.com became a property of IAC, owner of Ask.com and numerous other online brands, and its revenue is generated by advertising. In addition to its Manhattan headquarters, Dotdash Meredith maintains offices elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area, as well as in Des Moines, Iowa, and Birmingham, Alabama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brightcove</span> Boston, Massachusetts–based software company that produces an online video platform

Brightcove, Inc. is a Boston, Massachusetts–based software company that produces an online video platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infillion</span> American digital advertising company

Infillion, formerly known as Gimbal | true[X], TrueX, Inc. and SocialVibe, is an American digital advertising company founded in 2007 by Joe Marchese, Brandon Mills and David Levy. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles and New York City. It was previously owned by 21st Century Fox, from 2014 until Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019, and The Walt Disney Company from 2019 until 2020.

Perion Network is a global technology company that provides digital advertising products and services. It is headquartered in Holon, Israel, with offices in Tel Aviv, New York, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Toronto, and Kiev.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SoundCloud</span> German audio streaming service

SoundCloud is a Swedish founded- German headquarter audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming services in the world and is available in 190 countries and territories. The service has more than 76 million active monthly users and over 200 million audio tracks as of November 2021. SoundCloud offers both free and paid memberships on the platform, available for mobile, desktop and Xbox devices. SoundCloud has evolved from a traditional online streaming platform to an entertainment company.

Samba TV is a television technology company that offers real-time insights and audience analytics. It was founded in 2008 by early employees of BitTorrent, including Samba TV's current chief executive officer, Ashwin Navin. The company develops software for televisions, set-top boxes, smart phones and tablets to enable interactive television through personalization. Through its portfolio of applications and TV platform technologies, Samba TV is built directly into the TV or set-top box and will recognize onscreen content—live or time-shifted—and make relevant information available to users at their request.

Ooyala was a privately owned company focusing on video content workflow management systems. It began in 2007 as a venture-backed, privately held company founded by brothers Bismarck Lepe and Belsasar Lepe, and their colleague and friend from Google, Sean Knapp. It was acquired by Australian Telecom giant Telstra in 2012, which sold it to Ooyala management in October 2018 writing off all its investment. In Feb 2019 Ooyala sold its OVP business to Brightcove.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinterest</span> American photo sharing and saving website

Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information like recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the internet using images and, on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards. Created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, Pinterest, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News360</span> Personalized news aggregation app for smartphones, tablets and the web

News360 was a personalized news aggregation app for smartphones, tablets and the web. It attempted to learn a user's interests by analyzing their interaction with news stories on the app and using semantic analysis and natural language processing to create an Interest Graph and construct a unique feed of relevant content for each user. The app claims an audience of more than 4 million users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scopely</span> American entertainment company

Scopely, Inc. is an American interactive entertainment company and mobile-first video game developer and publisher. The company is headquartered in Culver City, California, with offices across the US, EMEA and Asia.

Whisper is a proprietary mobile app available without charge. It is a form of anonymous social media, allowing users to post and share photo and video messages anonymously, although this claim has been challenged with privacy concerns over Whisper's handling of user data. The postings, called "whispers", consist of text superimposed over an image, and the background imagery is either automatically retrieved from Whisper's search engine or uploaded by the user. The app, launched in March 2012, is the main product of the media company WhisperText LLC, which was co-founded by CEO Michael Heyward, the son of the entertainment executive Andy Heyward, and Brad Brooks, who is the CEO of mobile messaging service TigerText. Since 2015, the service has sought to become more of a brand advertising platform, with promotional partnerships with Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, HBO, and MTV. According to TechCrunch, as of March 2017, Whisper has a total of 17 billion monthly pageviews on its mobile and desktop websites, social channels and publisher network, with 250 million monthly users across 187 countries. It is owned by MediaLab. In October 2022, Whisper was removed from the Apple App Store, and was added to the App Store again but has was removed in 2023 again temporarily, but was recently restored to IOS in March of 2024

Swell Radio was a mobile radio streaming application that learned user listening preferences based on listening behavior, community filtering, and a proprietary algorithm. Originally designed for use while commuting to and from work, the service focused on delivering spoken-word audio content to users. Major streaming partners included ABC News Radio, NPR, PRI, and TED

Gravity was a start up content personalization company based out of Los Angeles, California, United States. They helped publishers and advertisers deliver personalized content and ads. The company was founded in 2009, by Amit Kapur, Jim Benedetto, and Steve Pearman. The company was acquired by AOL in January 2014, for a reported $90.7 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shaul Olmert</span> Israeli Entrepreneur

Shaul Olmert is an Israeli entrepreneur and business executive. He is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Piggy, a stealth mode start up based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Prior to Piggy, he was the co-founder of Playbuzz, an online content publishing platform where he served as chief executive officer for 8 years before stepping down and assuming a new role as the company's president. He has been involved in numerous other startups including NetAlign, GameGround, and Sundaysky. Olmert also worked as an executive with Nickelodeon/MTV Networks and Conduit.

Kamcord was a social media platform where users post and interact through video content from their mobile devices. Kamcord has pioneered a new content format called "shots," short videos or stills of a user's phone screen annotated with facecam, voice commentary, text, highlighting/drawing, animations, and other tools.

90min is a technology-enabled football news platform, which produces Internet content covering various football leagues. The content offered by the platform is user-generated following the principles of citizen journalism. The first London based company website was launched in 2011 as FTBpro.com by Israeli entrepreneurs Yuval Larom, Asaf Peled, and Gilad Beiman, a group which operates today as Minute Media.

Innovid is an American online advertising technology company that offers services used by advertisers and publishers for the distribution and management of digital ads. Originally launched as a video marketing platform, the company expanded its offering to include display and digital out-of-home when Herolens was acquired in 2019.

Tastemade, Inc. is a media company that offers food, travel, and home & design-related programming for online and streaming audiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freestyle Capital</span> Venture capital firm

Freestyle Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. General Partners Dave Samuel and Jenny Lefcourt are both entrepreneurs who entered venture capital after founding multiple companies. The firm was founded in 2009 and typically invests in 10-12 companies per year with an average investment between $1.5 million to $3 million. Previous investments include Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Digit, Betterup, Airtable and Snapdocs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haystack News</span> OTT platform for news videos

Haystack News is a free ad-supported streaming service for local, national and international news video available on smart TVs, over-the-top platforms and mobile apps. Haystack uses data from each user—such as location, topics of interest and favorite publishers—to create a personalized playlist of short news clips. The platform also hosts live channels from local, national and international news outlets.

References

  1. "Playbuzz CEO Shaul Olmert to Step Down". Calcalist. 10 October 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
  2. Blount, Leslie (25 March 2022). "How Personalization Helped Alex and Ani Boost Conversions 65%". Adweek. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
  3. Johnson, Lynne d (27 March 2023). "Ex.Co Gets Into the AI Content Recommendation Business: A Chat with CEO Tom Pachys". AdMonsters. Retrieved 2 May 2023.
  4. Kosoff, Maya (10 October 2014). "A BuzzFeed Clone Founded 10 Months Ago Is Crushing Other Websites On Facebook - Including BuzzFeed". The Business Insider. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  5. Shead, Sam (27 September 2017). "Playbuzz raised $35 million for its platform that aims to help publishers engage with the 'Snapchat generation'". The Business Insider. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
  6. Marshall, Jack (27 September 2017). "Disney-backed Playbuzz raises $35 million to grow content creation platform". MarketWatch. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
  7. Ellingson, Annlee (27 September 2017). "Disney invests more in accelerator graduate Playbuzz". L.A. Biz. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
  8. Ha, Anthony (18 November 2019). "Playbuzz becomes Ex.co and expands its content marketing platform". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  9. Ha, Anthony (22 April 2021). "EX.CO acquires video adtech company Cedato". TechCrunch. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
  10. "EX.CO Acquires Machine-Learning Company Bibblio to Expand Website Personalization Capabilities for Brands, Publishers, and E-commerce Businesses". Martech Series. 12 April 2022. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
  11. Blount, Leslie (25 March 2022). "How Personalization Helped Alex and Ani Boost Conversions 65%". Adweek. Retrieved 29 April 2022.