The Online space in India is booming and with all the money pouring in from the Silicon Valley, it’s just going to get bigger. Recently, Zenith Optimedia estimated the growth of ad spend to be 3600 crores by 2010 in India. It doesn’t seem far fetched when we have Jivox, a self servicing online video advertising platform which launched its services in India in March 2008, has received $10.7 million in series A financing. According to the release, Opus Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, and Helion Venture Partners, an India-focused venture fund, participated in the financing round, along with Jivox’s existing investors.
The funds will be used to continue development of the Jivox online video advertising platform as well as to expand the company’s sales and marketing efforts in both India & in the US. An interesting fact to ponder upon is how soon Indian traditional advertisers will catch up on online video advertising. According to Diaz Nesamoney, founder and CEO of Jivox, “Online video advertising is the fastest growing segment of digital online marketing but the cost of creating and placing video ads threatened to keep this medium beyond the reach of most businesses.”
Currently maximum traffic Jivox attracts is from US. In India, it has to still take off in a big way. This can be guaranteed with the backing they have now got from Helion Ventures and Opus Capital. Opus Capital General Partner, Ken Elefant seemed quite bullish about Jivox and commented, “Jivox has done an outstanding job proving its concept, gaining a large group of satisfied advertisers and building its network. The traction Jivox has gained in just a few months is a testament to the significant online video ad market opportunity as well as the strength of the Jivox team.”
This just goes on to show that traditional advertisers will now have one more opportunity to advertise online. However, the question that needs to be asked (which has been asked a 1000 times over the years) is whether advertising on TV will decline or whether the traditional advertisers will keep preferring TV to a more targeted medium? I guess, we will have to wait till 2010 and see if Zenith Optimedia projections come true 
