Neon Labs has announced that it has obtained $4.1 million in Series A funding in round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures and supported by prior investors True Ventures and technology executive Steve Blank.
Neon Labs provides technologies to help companies better monetize digital video that is attracting more interest from media players trying to get their content to stand out from a plethora of web and mobile content.
Drawing on extensive research at Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts General Hospital in cognitive neuroscience and human behavior, its founders developed algorithms for selecting images and thumbnails that are more appealing to users than those selected by people, the company says.
These images can generate up to 100 percent more engagement than human-selected images, boosting clicks and viewing, which in turn produce higher revenue from ads and other sources.
Along with the new funding, Neon also announced that it is working with IGN Entertainment. As part of that agreement, Neon will use those technologies to boost engagement among IGN’s 48.7 million unique monthly visitors.
In a statement, Jim Hall, VP of technology at IGN noted that the algorithms for selecting images took “a significant amount of work off of our hands” and “improved the clickability of our thumbnails by 30 percent on average. This is a huge win for us."
The new funding will help Neon expand to meet greater customer demand and continue to grow its partnership with online video platform provider Brightcove.
"We have supported Neon Labs since day one, based on their compelling vision to use science to change the way consumers interact with images in the digital era,” said Bill Ericson, general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures in a statement. “I think Neon Labs' technology has the potential to do for images what Dolby did for sound. With over a billion images loaded on the Internet each day, companies need new technologies to sift through and surface the best images at this massive scale. Selecting thumbnails for video is just the beginning for Neon."
