Since the turn of the new year Intertainment has continued with their strategy of investing in companies to add value to their current subsidiaries, and focusing on increasing the value of Ortsbo in anticipation for a spin off IPO of the subsidiary,
announced in November 2011. So far in 2012 the company has announced investments in
Shiny Ads, theAudience and Synchronica.
Shiny Ads Partnership
As indicated by
the news release, the Shiny Ads partnership demonstrates a further movement on the part of Intertainment Media into the marketing arena. Shiny Ads provides an automated self serve advertising platform for small companies to purchase online advertising, without having industry knowledge, as noted in the press release.
Shiny Ads is a Toronto based advertising technology company focused on helping online publishers maximize revenue from ad orders under $5,000. Our self-serve advertising platform provides online publishers with a solution that automates sales, finance and ad operations for smaller ad campaigns in a cost effective manner.
With Shiny Ads, smaller advertisers are able to quickly and easily purchase advertising without the need of industry knowledge, graphic designers, or a large budget.
Shiny Ads is NOT an ad network, nor do we solicit directly from advertisers or ad networks. We are a technology provider that supports your direct sales team and works in conjunction with your ad networks - providing online publishers with access to an untapped revenue stream.
Intertainment has closed an initial investment of $250,000 CND with an option for increasing that initial investment within six months. The investment also carries with it a seat on the Shiny Ads board of directors.
Shiny Ads and its suite of products is well positioned to capture a share of the estimated $14 billion dollar self-serve ad market. Winner of the Foreign Affairs Technology Growth Initiative and chosen by the IDC as a top 10 digital company to watch, Shiny Ads currently counts an impressive list of clients including CBS Interactive, DeviantArt.com, Wikia.com, AdWeek.com, Unanimis.co.uk, and SourceInterlink as well a number of other tier one brands.
In October 2011 Shiny Ads launched an audience targeting product. The focus of it being to allow companies a vehicle to maximize their own user data to develop highly targeted ads to their users.
Shiny Ads announces the launch of our audience targeting & optimization solution called Shiny Ads Audience Targeting. The offering is an add-on to the core Shiny Ads Self-Serve Advertising Platform and enables online publishers to take smaller ad buys for highly user-targeted ads by leveraging their user’s data and thus increasing revenue and performance.
Shiny Ads Audience Targeting acquires user data, targets on that rich user data and also has an innovative prediction engine that in real-time calculates which ad would obtain the highest performance for the current viewer based on rich user data and historical data from similar users.
It is this vehicle which is likely being eyed by Intertainment Media. As it would compliment their own subsidiary, AdTaffy, and allow Intertainment to tap into their current user base data from Ortsbo, Knctr, Live and Global events and their online group deal platform, DealFrenzy.com. Such a vehicle provides Intertainment the ability to expand into online marketing drawing upon its own user data (
the concept is illustrated here). This may be the first step toward realizing the overall business model being developed by Intertainment. From that of developer of applications (such as Ortsbo, Knctr, AdTaffy), to collector of user data and metrics to new media real time marketing firm. As was suggested by Intertainment Media's CMO, Brady Perry, in the company's NR February 1, 2012 regarding the Shiny Ads investment.
The investment in the Shiny Ads platform provides a fantastic strategic opportunity for Intertainment Media's current portfolio of investments." said Brad Parry, CMO of Intertainment Media. "The ability to more efficiently direct premium advertisers to our available inventory across our multiple platforms will ensure that we are securing the best possible returns for our inventory.
With data being collected from over 40 million worldwide users being reported for Ortsbo and with over 2 million North American users for Knctr (as of last report), there is significant potential for Intertaiment Media to provide highly targeted user adverts to their users and advertising metrics to other companies wishing to access their users. The real time aspect of both Intertainment and Shiny Ads is the niche which provides the synergy between the two companies. If Intertainment management sees value added to their current holdings through Shiny Ads then there may be an outright purchase of Shiny Ads by Intertainment, perhaps before 2013.
It may be a bold assertion to make if only looking at the Intertainment / Shiny Ads partnership. However, it may seem less bold when considering Intertainment's announcement of the development of an integrated translation and location based application, Kowango, at the LA Mobile Marketing Association Forum November 17, 2011. The application has been
described by David Lucatch in the following manner.
Using Kowango, an individual can instantly connect with other people who have an interest in a certain merchant, event, or topic and discuss it in their native language," said Mr. Lucatch. "Consumers in the mobile space increasingly base their purchasing decisions upon peer review and the overall buzz surrounding a service, product and / or merchant. Beyond simply establishing a multi-language chat dialogue, Kowango also encourages people to broaden their social network and meet individuals from different cultural backgrounds who share common interests.
The idea of Kowango and does fit well with a Shiny Ads / Ortsbo integrated platform, which would in fact create a comprehensive location based translation advertising platform.
theAudience Partnership
Concurrent with the investment, Intertainment and theAudience have entered into a separate binding agreement to integrate the Live & Global platform from Intertainment subsidiary Ortsbo Inc. into theAudience's social distribution platform, enabling real-time, multi-lingual translation for certain live events on behalf of theAudience clients and partners. The companies will jointly promote the integrated offering.
Variety Partnership
This partnership saw
the debut of Ortsbo's Language Captioning System during Variety's Consumer Electronics Show, January 10-13, 2012. The relationship between Ortsbo Inc. and Variety continues to build Ortsbo's Live and Global platform into a globally relevant online communications platform, as spoken to in the press release.
Ortsbo Inc. is to power Variety conferences, summits and events, allowing entertainment, business and sports professionals global remote access to conference content via Ortsbo's Live & Global platform beginning with The Variety Entertainment Summit at The 2012 International CES® taking place in Las Vegas.
The Variety Entertainment Summit will be the exclusive launch of Ortsbo's new proprietary service; multi-lingual closed captioning, or Ortsbo's Language Captioning System, which allows viewers to watch video broadcasts, and also view an accompanying language real time text stream, like closed captioning found on television broadcasts, but in their personally selected choice of over 50 languages. This game-changing proprietary system, which is part of Ortsbo's Live & Global platform, provides the ability for universal language broadcasting on a global basis, regardless of the native language of the broadcaster, potentially changing the face of ethnic, cultural, sports, entertainment, business and other forms of online, video and television live and pre-recorded broadcast programming.
Synchronica Partnership
A significant investment partnership between Intertainment Media and
Synchronica, was signaled with the announcement of a
letter of intent announced February 8, 2012 speaking to Intertainment's proposed investment in Synchronica of up to $10M and a co-development initiative between the companies.
Synchronica has established a market presence as seen by the
Synchronica Announcement of the company securing a 1.5 mil contract for its' Mobile Gateway product. A deal that followed a
December 9 2011 announcement of the company securing an expansion order from a leading handset manufacturer.
Angus Dent: Synchronica Mobile Gateway, as the name implies, is a gateway that allows carriers and device manufacturers to offer push email services, instant messaging services and, increasingly, social networking messages in both directions to devices. We came from the email space, added instant messaging as that became more popular, and now we’re focusing on the social networking side of things. We’re in the process of bringing out a unified inbox, so you can get all your messages, whatever the bearer of those messages may be, in one place, on your handset. Adding the geo-location services, so your device knows where you are. So if you land at an airport in Toronto, as I have just done, you want an Italian restaurant, your mobile will tell you that. That’s one application of geo-location. With Intertainment, it’s not just about finding a restaurant, it’s about being able to talk to that restaurant in their native language, if you are in Italy, for instance. Of course geo-location chat is the next wave that is hitting us now.
David Lucatch: Synchronica has a stellar reputation for the development of carrier-grade technologies. That is something that Ortsbo could do down the road, but might take years to develop because of the lengthy approval process. Synchronica has over 100 mobile operators and device manufacturers within their partnership scheme. That gives us instant access to a global network, which means it gives us instant access to users within that global network. Ortsbo is developing a series of mobile applications that need homes, and we have other ideas for applications across operating platforms. So Synchronica provides those gateways. Synchronica also has the expertise to allow us to accelerate all our development programs.
Synchronica has a presence in twelve countries; Russia, Ukraine, Panama, Philippines, Peru, Argentina, Columbia, Ghana, Panama, Peru, Norway and India. With a successful deal which would see Ortsbo preinstalled throughout the Synchronica network the potential for further user growth looks promising. The potential for significant user growth is amplified when considering the Synchronica deal coupled with
previously announced investment partnership between Ortsbo Inc and China's Green Channel, as noted below.
Ortsbo Inc. has made an investment in Hong Kong based China Green Channel International ("CGCI"), an officially sanctioned Canadian & Beijing joint venture that has signed a partnership agreement with China Education Television for the development, distribution and management of advertising and sponsorship for Western and native Chinese programming focusing on humanities and early child education.
This recognized venture guarantees Ortsbo's rights to provide automated and human based translation services for the conversion of foreign broadcast content as well as participate in the development of original content for the Chinese television market.
Ortsbo could be well positioned to grow into, and with, relevant emerging markets by providing not only real time translation services to emerging markets but also real time advertising content to these emerging markets via the Shiny Ads and AdTaffy as the delivery tools and Western entertainment content via partnerships forged with Variety and theAudience.
It is believed that the investment partnership entered into with
Lexifone in November 2011 may be paying off already. As noted in a previous post on this blog Intertainment is seeking to strengthen Ortsbo capabilities and in the case of the Lexifone deal voice translation was added to Ortsbo. It is suggested that the Lexifone technology may be powering the newly debuted closed captioning technology now being offered by Ortsbo via the Live and Global platform.
In regard to the anticipated Ortsbo IPO. Intertainment Media provided an update of the offering in a
press release January 20, 2012 in which it was stated,
As previously announced, management has presented, as part of the initial strategic plan, a proposal to issue subject to tax and regulatory review, in conjunction with the completion of the proposed spin out, the Company would affect a dividend whereby shareholders of Intertainment, as of an effective record date, will, in total, receive up to 20% of the pre-money value of Ortsbo by way of common stock received by Intertainment in the new Ortsbo publicly listed entity. Under the terms of the proposal, the dividend will be distributed to record date shareholders as Ortsbo common stock. Given further review of the potential value and costs associated with the proposed spin out, management has revised its presentation, under the same terms and conditions, to increase the distribution to shareholders to up to 30%. The Company will announce the record date for this distribution and other activities shortly.
Ortsbo Inc. IPO
For shareholders of Intertainment Media the Ortsbo spinoff could be a winning situation at most any valuation. That’s because current accounting principals force Intertainment to recognize the value of Ortsbo at zero. An IPO would peg an actual value to the asset, instantly increasing the value of whatever stake the company maintains.
However, it should be expected that the Ortsbo Inc. IPO would be announced once full traction of the Ortsbo applications has been realized, specifically the Live and Global platform. This would require Ortsbo Live and Global repeating the success of the recent
live coverage of the 2012 Orange British Academy Film Awards. During which there was seen significant participation growth by both celebrities and viewers, as noted in the press release.
Ortsbo.com together with Variety Magazine has unofficially smashed Ortsbo's Guinness World Record established in May 2011 together with its live coverage of the 2012 Orange British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) with 161 countries viewing the event in 53 instantly translated languages. The broadcast featured live interviews with some of today's biggest stars including George Clooney, Viola Davis, Kenneth Branagh, Berenice Bejo, Octavia Spencer, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Hemsworth, Jim Broadbent, Neil Stiles and Daniel Radcliffe live from the Red Carpet instantly translated with Ortsbo's Real Time Closed Captioning Language Translation System. Ortsbo also provided coverage and commentary of the Winner's press area with award winners including Meryl Streep and Martin Scorcese answering Ortsbo questions from fans around the world.
The Variety Studio interviews, powered by Ortsbo, feature such notable entertainers as Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Sigourney Weaver, Paul Simon, Ice-T, Paul Giamatti, Lou Diamond Phillips, Joshua Jackson, William H. Macy, David Duchovny and many other leading celebrities. The Live & Global platform attracted an audience from around the world with a 45 minute live video discussion with the legendary Stan Lee, hosted by Ortsbo spokesman and business partner, Gene Simmons.
The Live and Global platform has been realizing more growth than any of the other Ortsbo offerings and as such it is taking on more significance. Its continued and increasing success is becoming more important in establishing Ortsbo as "the" platform for events and celebrities to extend a global presence. In turn, the marketing will follow, although it is already occurring as Ortsbo is providing marketing reach for these events and celebrities.
The early adoption phase is over or coming to an end for Ortsbo and it is now time for the entertainment, infotainment, business industries and celebrities to see value in the platform in order for Ortsbo Inc. to become globally significant and for the next phase of user uptake to begin. Should this be realized, then one should read "user" as "potential consumer". And those online users/consumers will be targeted with adverts geared to them based upon their own content (text, verbal, geolocal) in real time, using the technology of Kowango, AdTaffy, Shiny Ads or some conglomerated version of the technologies.
