video-monetization
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Aferian kept the video running. Its own money ran out.
Aferian built the technology behind streaming apps and thousands of managed screens. Its March 2026 collapse left Amino and 24i operating under new ownership - and shareholders with no return from the sale.
INVIDI Put Digital Ad Logic Inside Television - Now It Has to Make Every Screen Behave
The Princeton ad-tech company made the old television set act a little more like the internet without turning the viewer into the product. Its next trick is harder: carrying that precision across streaming, live sports and hundreds of millions of boxes that are not even online.
Perion Network
The Israeli adtech company spent a decade buying its way across every screen. Now, after Microsoft pulled the rug on its search business, Perion is betting the whole company on one AI platform - and on the screens Google can't own.
Uscreen
The bootstrapped platform behind $1 billion in creator earnings is betting that the future of video isn't a bigger audience - it's owning the one you already have.
EX.CO
EX.CO is a machine learning-driven video technology platform that helps publishers and media owners run, manage, and monetize video across web, mobile, CTV, and DOOH. Founded in 2012 as the interactive-content company Playbuzz and rebranded to EX.CO in 2019, the New York-based, Disney-backed company now offers an online video platform (OVP), a CMS, player technology, and an LLM-powered recommendation and yield engine used by publishers including Advance Local, Hearst Newspapers, The Arena Group, and Ziff Davis.
Rizzle
Rizzle is an AI video creation, distribution, and monetization platform that turns written content - articles, blogs, newsletters and scripts - into polished, brand-safe videos in minutes. Built for publishers, media companies and content creators, it pairs generative AI drafting with human editorial refinement and pre-licensed assets from Getty Images, ElevenLabs and Soundstripe, then syndicates the finished videos across platforms like MSN, Yahoo and NewsBreak. Founded in 2019 by Vidya Narayanan and Lakshminath Dondeti, Rizzle began as a consumer short-video social app that grew to tens of millions of users before pivoting to an enterprise SaaS model for video-first content at scale.
Maestro
Maestro is a Los Angeles-based interactive video and live streaming platform that lets brands, creators, and rights holders build their own direct-to-consumer streaming destinations. Instead of renting an audience on someone else's platform, Maestro customers own the experience end to end - custom branded sites, interactive overlays (chat, polls, tip jars), and built-in monetization through ticketing, subscriptions, live shopping, and tips, while keeping their data and most of their revenue. Founded in 2015 by Ari Evans, the company powers streams for names like Billie Eilish, the Grammys, Coachella, Fortnite/Epic Games, and Microsoft.
Ari Evans
Ari Evans is the founder and CEO of Maestro, the Los Angeles-based white-label live streaming and interactive video platform he started in 2015. He built Maestro on a simple conviction: creators and rights holders should own their audiences and data instead of renting them from algorithm-driven giants. The platform powers interactive streams, monetization and analytics for clients ranging from Billie Eilish and Post Malone to Epic Games, PlayStation and ViacomCBS, and counts Sony Music among its investors. A former Zynga product manager who ran CityVille at its peak, Evans frames the creator economy as the biggest job-creation engine since the Industrial Revolution.
Omar Tawakol
Omar Tawakol is a serial entrepreneur and AI advertising pioneer who turned audience data, voice AI, and now spatially-aware AI into three consecutive company exits. He founded BlueKai (acquired by Oracle for $400M+), Voicea (acquired by Cisco), and currently leads Rembrand, an AI-powered virtual product placement platform that embeds brands invisibly into video content. He holds board seats at The Trade Desk and LiveRamp, and in 2025 merged Rembrand with Spaceback to build an AI-powered ad factory that reaches across CTV, digital video, and display.