News of the agreement come along Neon completing its $4.1m series A.
Neon Labs, a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) startup, has announced a partnership with IGN Entertainment. The two will work together to maximise IGN’s current viewership of 48.7 million unique visitors.
At the same time, Neon has also announced a $4.1m series A round, which was led by Mohr David Ventures and supported by existing investors True Ventures and tech executive Steve Blank.
Neon’s web-based service is able to identify the most visually appealing frame from a video and use that as a thumbnail. The technology is based on research at the Centre for the Neural Basis of Cognition, a joint initiative between CMU and Pittsburgh University. It also makes use of research conducted at Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital, which developed algorithms that increase user-engagement by up to 100% as compared to manually selected images. Through using Neon’s software, publishers can increase their revenue by 5% to 30%.
The company also already has a partnership with Brightcove, a Boston-based online video platform.
Michael Tarr, co-founder and senior technical advisor at Neon and head of CMU’s Department of Psychology, said: “It is very exciting that IGN has chosen to be one of Neon’s first partners. Our collaboration with them has reinforced how ideally suited Neon’s proprietary technology is to helping online video publishers increase user engagement through state-of-the-art brain science. This is great for Neon and illustrates how basic research in human cognitive neuroscience can be successfully applied to solve technology problems.”
