Rapt Media, the fastest and easiest way to create world-class Interactive Videos, today announced that it closed $3.1 million in venture financing, led by Boulder Ventures Ltd. Rapt Media will use the funding to build out a presence in New York and Los Angeles so that the company will be in the hearts of where brands, agencies, and production companies thrive. The new round brings Rapt Media's total funding to $7.5 million.

'Video is the fastest growing format in branding and advertising, and mobile is the fastest growing form factor in the consumption of content,' said Peter Roshko, General Partner at Boulder Ventures Ltd. 'Rapt Media's interactive video platform enables content creation for the next generation of mobile video, and has captured mindshare among leading consumer brands. We are excited to participate in this with Erika Trautman and her Rapt Media team.'

The interactive video category is growing at an amazing rate as companies continue to seek the best way to engage users. Entertaining content like the interactive Bob Dylan and Pharrell Williams music videos show the creative power of interactive video, but Rapt Media's focus is on harnessing that creative power to help companies move the needle on their business goals.

'The concept of mere 'brand awareness' is dead,' said Rapt Media CEO and Co-Founder Erika Trautman. 'We as consumers are so inundated with content and brand messaging that the half-life on brand awareness is just seconds. Companies talk about the number of views a video gets as if it's a real economic commodity, but it's fool's gold. If viewers aren't engaging in a real way, they're not going to remember your brand. Rapt Media helps companies use the engagement a user feels in the moment to drive real business conversions, like sign-ups, sales inquiries, and purchases.'

Rapt Media Launches Eloqua Marketing Automation System Integration

As part of its business-focused drive to convert viewers into users and customers, Rapt Media also announced the launch of its integration with marketing automation system Eloqua. Enterprise-level customers can now collect more valuable information about leads by using Eloqua's marketing automation suite to capture user interactions within an interactive video experience. This essentially lets companies monitor how people are traveling through interactive videos the same way they monitor how people travel through their website.

'As more brands and agencies invest in interactive video as a tool for engaging viewers, they've come to recognize the value of the intelligence that can be captured from those interactions,' said Caleb Hanson, VP of Product at Rapt Media. 'That's why we've developed an integration with Eloqua, the leading marketing automation system for enterprise.'

Rapt Media's software, ideal for companies that are looking to get more value out of their online videos, puts choices in an interactive video, allowing users to self-select content and, in doing so, reveal information about themselves. The integration captures those choices and feeds that data into Eloqua, which lets companies then qualify and segment those leads. With this new integration with Eloqua, video will now be just as powerful as your website.

'For CMOs, video is a great communication tool that people like to engage with, but good CMOs also know marketing should be data-driven,' said Trautman. 'You can now use video to collect the same kind of data as a cumbersome conversion form but in a personalized and entertaining way that better engages the lead. This gives companies a better way to qualify and segment leads while reducing the barrier to conversion, finally making both data junkies and brand storytellers very happy.'

The new Eloqua integration was originally piloted in a project for digital marketing agency Room 214. Tasked with finding a way to promote its client inContact's Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center solution in a new and cutting-edge way, Room 214 looked to Rapt Media. The agency integrated Rapt Media's Site Pairing technology with inContact's Eloqua marketing automation system to create video content that speaks to each viewer in a personalized way, allowing inContact to gather valuable information about those viewers.

In the video, a user selects a path based on information like their role in the company and the size of their call center. These selections serve tailored content specific to that user, and the information about the user's selections is captured and used to qualify the lead.

'It makes sense that if you're asking a user to make choices, you would use those choices to better understand that user, which is why we chose this route for our client,' said Room 214 producer and editor Jen Casson. 'Now every choice the user makes reduces the amount of info you have to collect to qualify them as a lead when they convert. It's just easier for everyone.'

For more information about Rapt Media and its interactive video solutions, including its integration with Eloqua, visit www.raptmedia.com.

About Rapt Media
Rapt Media is the fastest and easiest way to create world-class Interactive Videos (IV) and is fundamentally changing how companies engage their customers online. Rapt Media's suite of powerful browser-based solutions and team of digital media experts make it possible to create highly engaging, Interactive Video experiences at scale that deliver a better return on investment than standard video. Rapt Media uses video, today's most compelling form of communication, to take brand strategies to a new level of customer engagement and conversion.