Today, the Peter Gabriel-backed company tells us that one of them is Dailymotion, the France-based online video site. And we can report that the second deal, which will be announced in the next couple of weeks, is with a U.S.-based online video site of a similar size to Dailymotion.

The Dailymotion agreement is a big boost for The Filter. World-wide, the video site has about 66 million monthly visitors, which takes up the number of people using The Filter’s engine up to 86 million every month.

The agreement, which will see The Filter powering recommendations for videos on the site, underscores the push from online video companies to increase users’ “dwell time”, a metric that can then be used to sell against higher ad rates. The move into working with online video companies is an emerging area for The Filter: up to now some of its biggest customers have been music-based services.

The Filter also looks like it is also gearing up to do more in the U.S.: the U.S. customer win with an online video provider, which was confirmed to us by a spokesperson for the company, will come on the heels of its appointment of Doug Merrill, the former CIO of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), to its board of directors in May.

Financial terms of the agreement with Dailymotion were not disclosed. Currently The Filter says it processes some 1 billion API calls per month from all of its white-label customers.

Other companies that The Filter works with include the Music Entertainment division of Sony (NYSE: SNE) (it powers recommendations on MyPlay); online video rental site DVDPost; ThePlatform and Evolver.net, along with We7, the Gabriel-backed music site. The Filter also says it “collaborates” with Nokia (NYSE: NOK), presumably on Nokia Music, although a spokesperson would not confirm this directly.

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• Recommendation Site The Filter Adds Ex-Googler Merrill On The White-Label Trail

—Dailymotion: David Ripert has been promoted to the role of director, global content partnerships for Dailymotion, to be based in New York. He had been the online video site’s senior manager for content and partnerships in Paris. (Via Cynopsis)

—Samsung: Will Lever is the new European brand director for Samsung Electronics Europe. He comes from a marketing role at Best Buy, and has also held senior marketing roles at Carphone Warehouse, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) UK and O2. (Via mad.co.uk.)

—Unanimis: The Orange-owned ad agency is expanding its mobile sales team. It has appointed Alex Rahaman as director of mobile and added four more executives to the group. Rahaman was previously the company’s operations and finance director. (via NMA.)

—Time (NYSE: TWX) Out app: While Dailymotion does freemium, the London guide’s new app for entertainment listings, restaurants etc comes sponsored by Smirnoff. Via Guardian.co.uk.

—Directgov: The UK central govt website has released a free travel news iPhone app and is paying Kelly Brook and others to market it as “the nation’s official website” (via Mad.co.uk) - just as paidContent:UK hears rumblings that other government departments want to bring down Directgov.

Now Digby’s resurfacing at the new online content operation started by ex Bebo chief Joanna Shields and Shine Group CEO Elisabeth Murdoch.

He confirmed the move to C21. He will be director of content and digital development.

At Dailymotion, Lewis had struck content deals including one to get an exclusive window on The Hunt For Golum, a Lord Of The Rings spinoff.

Shields had led Bebo to commission original video drama for the social network. Shine Group‘s production companies make Spooks, Ashes To Ashes, The Wright Stuff and more.

Here’s my June video interview with Lewis...

Related

• Former Bebo Exec Shields Partnering On Content Company With Shine's Murdoch
• Dailymotion Confirms €17 Million VC Round
• Video Interview: Digby Lewis, UK Creative Director, Dailymotion

—Brightcove: London-based video-technology platform Brightcove is now being used on Sky Deutschland’s Sky.de as part of a new deal that will see its sports content streamed online. Some content, such as Bundesliga football highlights, will be available to non-subscribers too. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NYSE: NWS) owns about 40 percent of the German broadcaster.

—Blinkbox: UK video player Blinkbox has signed a deal with the British Film Institute to shows its catalogue of films. The ad-funded deal covers 37 feature films and means Blinkbox now has more than 500 British films and 6,000 in total.

—Dailymotion: The french video site has signed a deal to add 5,000 music videos licensed by indie digital music distributor The Orchard.

The site has 60 million unique users, is translated into 20 languages and is the leader in its domestic market. But Tournay admits the company can’t just be successful in “one domestic market—we need to be global”. And he hopes US success could translate into carriage deals and greater success in key markets such as the UK.

—American dream: According to Comscore (NSDQ: SCOR) Dailymotion has about 10 million monthly users Stateside, but for Tournay that’s not nearly enough. “For our US strategy, we need to invest in the technology, the platform, the staff and the content acquisitions,” he says. So having led cost cuts across the company of about 10 percent since joining in July, Tournay now wants to hire five or six US based staff at first—more may be added later—to add to its 15-strong New York-based team.

— IPTV: The site is already available on some web TV platforms and, in France, via digital terrestrial TV and ISPs. But Tournay has now set his sights on 30 percent of all DM views coming from TV in the next two to three years. “It’s a tremendous change for our business,” says Tournay. “We’re seeing an increasing audience through TV, it’s a more simple experience, it’s more intuitive, its fast and people like it.”  Without naming anyone, Tournay confirms negotiations are on-going with IPTV providers in the US and Europe.

—iPhone app: The company will launch two iPhone apps within the next two weeks: one will be free and ad-supported while the other is available for a one-time fee, will have no ads and gives users “premimum services”. No word on the price—talks are on-going with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) on that front. “This is a good market. Mobile advertising is moving very fast, so we hope this will be a profitable activity for us.”

—London calling: Tournay admits that the company is “too weak, too small” in the UK and he would like to bolster the company’s London operation with more staff and resources—and hopefully one or more IPTV carriage deals. But he says the key to cracking the “very tough” UK market is to find one large distribution partner and be successful in America first: “We tend to believe that to be strong in the UK you need to be strong in the US—you need a very, very strong English language catalogue and a global brand.” UK country manager Digby Lewis left the company this month—no word so far on his replacement.

—Business model defence: But can any of this actually work? Just months ago the business was scaling back because of high costs. “Our conviction is that we have shown that our business model is a good one, contrary to what people have thought,” says Tournay. “People believe that because of our distribution costs,  bandwidth costs and storage and so on, it would be impossible to break even—but that’s not right, our costs are decreasing quite fast.” The new money will support the international expansion, but Tournay stresses that as the business gets bigger, the costs of serving video “get cheaper and cheaper”.

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• Corrected: Dailymotion Confirms €17 Million VC Round
• Industry Moves: Dailymotion Taps Cedric Tournay As New CEO
• Updated: Dailymotion Raises Another €15 Million As Costs Prove Challenging

Original: Exactly two weeks after raising €15 million ($25.5 million) in VC funds, French video site Dailymotion on Thursday confirmed it raised a VC round earlier this month worth €17 million ($25.5 million). Existing investors Advent Venture Partners, AGF PE, Partech International and Atlas Ventures all took part and €7.5 million is contributed by Fonds Strategique d’investissement (FSI), which is 49 percent owned by the French state and now joins the Dailymotion board.

According to its release (pdf, in French), FSI invested partly because the business is “on the threshold of profitability”. The site has attracts 60 million unique monthly users and has raised more than $90 million since 2006. What’s the money going to be spent on? Dailymotion says in the release it fund the movement into new areas such as mobile and IPTV  Dailymotion has not responded to our request for comment so far.

Atlas Ventures’ Fred Destin confirms the round on his blog, adding that Atlas grows its stake in the business as a result. “As for most video-sharing sites it’s been a rollercoaster four years of hypergrowth, legal woes, scaling challenges peppered with some great moments of exhilaration,” he writes. “The segment remains challenging, not least because your main competitor is…Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and its monstrously successful video acquisition.” 

Destin says he’s not “declaring victory yet” and admits the site is “fallen behind in some areas” such as search and the MotionMaker UGC programme, which is “due an upgrade. But nevertheless he says DM is sustainable and he’s happy to back it. For him the real challenge (and he’s not kidding) is proving that the business is worth half a billion: “Clearly we are not there yet!”

It’s quite a turnaround in growth strategy: one year ago former CEO Mark Zaleski told us that the site didn’t need any new money—yet since then it’s further cemented its position as one of the most heavily VC-funded content business in Europe.

Update: It appears the cost-cutting drive DM CEO Cedric Tournay has implemented is not entirely over: the company confirmed to us that UK country manager Digby Lewis has left the company as part of a drive to cut costs by 20 percent.

His own MotionMaker page describes him as: “Former Dailymotion UK Country Manager. Now running a digital media consultancy business.” According to his LinkedIn page, he’s been head of digital at the Universal Music JV Alltheworlds, which runs events including F1 Rocks.

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• Europe Round-Up: Russia's Microsoft Probe; Dailymotion Stats; Deutsche Telekom IPTV; Fremantle CEO
• Industry Moves: Dailymotion Taps Cedric Tournay As New CEO
• Video Interview: Digby Lewis, UK Creative Director, Dailymotion
• Updated: Dailymotion Raises Another €15 Million As Costs Prove Challenging

Twelve months ago, then CEO Mark Zaleski told me the site didn’t need further funds, but the last year has seen the board swap Zaleski for Cedric Tournay, who promptly shaved 20 percent of Dailymotion’s costs, partly through layoffs.

Dailymotion had taken $9.5 million in setup money from Atlas Venture and Partech International in 2006 plus a further $34 million from Advent Venture Partners and AGF Private Equity a year later. Tournay tells Capital.fr the new money, which comes from original investors and one new backer, “strengthens our balance sheet and allows us to fund our growth”.

He forecasts 50 percent better revenue this year and next, and says the company is profitable at the operating level. But bandwidth costs are still rising faster than turnover. Sales are now outstripping outgoings on bandwidth, which makes up 25 percent of costs, Tournay said.

“At the moment, we are poor at monetising our audience,” Tournay says. “Dailymotion started its business strategy there only two years ago. The consequence: less than 10 percent of our videos include advertising.”

The site, claims 60 million monthly uniques, is a firm fixture in its native France but has been trying to make a name for itself in overseas markets, too. It has tried to set itself apart from the user-generated content sites with a mix of professional content like independent film - but neither is it the only site trying to do that.

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• Confirmed: Dailymotion Replacing CEO Zaleski With Brotherston
• @ Mipcom Interview: Mark Zaleski, CEO, Dailymotion: An Investment For A Broadcaster?

—Dailymotion: Fresh from swapping its CEO, the French video site has got a slim, one-week exclusive window on Lord Of The Rings fans’ self-produced upcoming film The Hunt For Gollum. The flick is premiered simultaneously with the 8th Annual London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film on May 3, 4pm. It’s only a fan flick, and hardly a Hollywood premiere, but Dailymotion hopes it can tap in to the, let’s say, loyal Rings fanbase.

—Perform: Sports rights distributor Perform’s sales division has been appointed to sell online display and video advertising for the Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) Women’s Tennis Association Tour’s website. The site hopes to get 730,000 unique users a month during the tour and is looking to Perform to sign sponsorship deals as well as sell video ads. Perform was also hired to to redevelop Sonyericssonwtatour.com and launch its mobile site. Perform now provides video support and commercial services to more than 200 websites. From Mediaweek.

—Orange 3DTV: BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) has dabbled with 3DTV trials in the UK, and now French telco Orange is hosting a live 3D broadcast of a top fligh Ligue 1 football match between Olympique Lyonnaise and Paris Saint-Germain. Fans are being invited by Orange and the two clubs to watch on big screens outside the teams’ stadiums, in association with the league and broadcaster HBS. Via Advancedtelevision.com.

A statement from the board says Zaleski “has resigned from his position with the company as CEO to pursue other opportunities and spend more time on his other investments”. Brotherston will be based in Dailymotion’s Paris office has already updated his LinkedIn profile, which shows he also has had director roles at easyJet and Severn Trent. The statement did not say Zaleski would stay on as non-executive chairman, as first reported, nor that it was looking to raise more money.

Three of Dailymotion’s VC backers use the statement to laud Zaleski. Lead investor Partech’s Philippe Collombe: “Mark has driven the many phases of our development, including taking the lead in the industry in anti-piracy protection by being the only video-sharing site to use two different content filters.” Advent’s Peter Baines says user numbers have grown 50 percent in the last five months. AGF’s Benoist Grossmann, somewhat generally, says Brotherston’s role “will be to lead Dailymotion in its next phase of development” - but there’s no detail on what that next phase will be.

Dailymotion rejects the “French YouTube” tag; it has rolled out in non-French territories, points to its editorialised channel sections as a differentiator from skateboarding-dog UGC sites and has tried to cosy to independent film and documentary makers - but so have other platforms like Babelgum. Dailymotion previously raised a €7 million first round from Atlas and Partech, then another €25 from those plus Advent and AGF

Zaleski, also chairman, will remain non-executive chairman and will lead international ops while Ian Brotherston, formerly of BT (NYSE: BT) and AOL (NYSE: TWX), will come in as new CEO, Stratégies newsletter reported, putting Dailymotion’s 2008 revenue at €12.5 million, which isn’t disastrous. Le Journal du Net last week foretold the switcharound, saying the site plans to raise more money this year, as video sites generally find making money tough-going. No word on any of that yet from the company.

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• Industry Moves: Raindance Film Festival Producer Joins Dailymotion
• @ Mipcom Interview: Mark Zaleski, CEO, Dailymotion: An Investment For A Broadcaster?
• Dailymotion Goes More Legit With French Video Owners

The move is interesting in light of earlier speculation Hulu would opt for a European tie-up with the now-aborted Kangaroo service. But this is now a far cry from Hulu’s latest strategy, which last month pulled syndicated videos from third-party services TV.com and Boxee. And it’s hard to see what, beyond discoverability, Hulu will get from the arrangement; the Hulu user experience is much slicker than Dailymotion’s. It’s more of a win for Dailymotion, which just swelled its library of professional videos in one fell swoop. Release.

Dailymotion is trying to position itself apart from UGC counterparts like YouTube by offering a greater degree of professionally produced material through curated channels. But YouTube is already going great guns with its broadcaster partner programme. Dailymotion, like Babelgum, has recently been courting the independent film circuit.

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(photo: by Andreas Tovin)

—Providing an easy to use and accessible “report abuse” button.
—Making sure under-18s’ profiles are set to “private” by default. “This will make it harder for people with bad intentions to get in touch with the young person,” the commission says.
—Ensuring under-18s’ private profiles are not searchable either on the websites or via search engines.
—Guaranteeing that privacy options are prominent and accessible at all times, so that users can easily work out if just their friends, or the entire world, can see what they post online.
—Preventing under-age users from using their services - eg. if a social networking site targets teenagers over 13, it should be difficult for people below that age to register.

The measures must be implemented by April. More info at the commission’s site. To mark its Safer Internet Day, the commission has produced an awareness campaign...

—Ofcom’s broadband code: ISPs will be forced to tell customers the truth about broadband speeds at point of sale, under a new Ofcom code. So far, 48 ISPs have signed up, covering 95 percent of the country’s broadband coverage. An Ofcom study to be published next year has found about a quarter of people with broadband subscriptions said they did not get the speed advertised - the code now compels providers to offer an alternate package at no extra cost if broadband speeds fall below what was expected.

—Dailymotion: The video sharing site, currently trying to woo independent film makers with its high-quality video player, is doing a simultaneous movie premier stream with the Cinecity Brighton Film Festival on Saturday night. WMD is a documentary about Iraq and will be online at the UK site until Monday morning.

With big €31.9 million VC funding behind it, Dailymotion has become France’s largest media site, but with slow international progress in the face of larger Anglophone rivals. Is more money needed to challenge the big rival? “Don’t need anymore, it’s always nice to have more. We would clearly be open if someone came along with smart money and said ‘we could bring this or that to you, could we take a small position in you?’ If it was something that would augment what we’re doing, then you’d say ‘why not?’”

Zaleski says he’s not actively seeking such, but it sounds like a “come and get me” to traditional media players seeking a friendly web distributor (remember CBS’ (NYSE: CBS) Joost investment?): “Increasingly, we get people coming to us to discuss deals, because you’ve got YouTube and that anti-Google lobby that’s out there, but we’d have to be careful because we don’t want to appear too biased (toward a particular broadcaster).”

One wonders whether French TV channel TF1‘s $57 million lawsuit against Dailymotion is actually designed to win such an equity stake - Zaleski says the companies talked a couple of years back but the case is more about an old guard beast “playing to the markets”. “I’m not worried about it because we’ve always complied with every takedown request, we’ve done nothing wrong, we’ve tried to help them fingerprint.” The site got stung by a small copyright damages payout last year but takes rights relatively seriously, using AudibleMagic and INA fingerprinting.

—UK: Meanwhile, Dailymotion won’t hire anyone to replace Kate Burns, the UK MD who recently left for Bebo after only about five months. UK creative director Digby Lewis is already handling the content side and, whilst hiring a separate UK MD was logical at the time, it’s now better to keep UK ops closer to the main French HQ, Zaleski said.

—Internationalisation and competition: A leader with 10 million monthly uniques at home, Dailymotion gets 27 million overseas, including seven million US, after having localised the homepage in 18 countries. “Hiring me was part of ‘we’re not a French company, we’re an international company’. But the strategy abroad, finding professional media partners, is the same as at home - and, let’s face it, the same as YouTube.

—Quality: One of Dailymotion’s advantages, Zaleski says, is 1280x720 HD quality videos - part of the site’s effort to woo independent film makers, which also includes partnerships like the Raindance festival. The site also says its human-programmed editorial section pages aide discoverability, going back to that YouTube complaint.

Related

• Industry Moves: Bebo Takes Dailymotion MD Burns To Lead European Ops
• The Race of Also-Rans: French Video Sharing Site Dailymotion Raises $34 Million; More To Come

Such agreements are important for Dailymotion, which a court last year ordered to give a total €23,001 penalty to producers and distributors of a French movie its users had uploaded without permission. Dailymotion uses Audible (NSDQ: ADBL) Magic to detect infringing video clips but is also facing a €40 million copyright suit from TF1, which is also claiming €100 million from YouTube, specifically over uploading of episodes of the Heroes series, to which it owns rights.

Related

• Dailymotion Fined $32,000 For French Movie Copyright Abuse
• TF1 To Sue Dailymotion, YouTube With €140 Million Copyright Claim: Report

—Dailymotion: Another to knock on ITN On’s door, the video site will distribute on its pages five video channels from the news agency. The site’s ITN News channel will pipe breaking news videos, its UGC-like YouNews strand, a special environmental show, the T3 Gadget Show and its recently-begun Gamerzine TV games show, as well as its OMG and This Is Genius channels. Via J.co.uk.

—Bebo: The teen social net is introducinging another video drama, though not strictly one of its own. Models Live, a fly-on-the-wall Next Top Model clone, is made by IMG Media for Vogue.tv. Bebo will host the audience interaction portions surrounding the web show. Mashable: “Each model will also have a profile for updating their blogs, video diaries, text messages, photos, schedules, and more.”

—MusicMakesFriends: The France-based music-centric social net has been licensed by Warner Music International, meaning it can start streaming tracks from Warner artists like R.E.M. and Madonna. The site already had licenses with the other three majors plus 9,000 indies, AFP reports, offering both free streaming and unlimited tracks for €8.99 per month. Last.fm lost Warner’s license a couple of months back.

Some web folk tongues are wagging about the circumstances of the departure. Atlas has closely coordinated the outfit and its VC Fred Destin had glowing words for Bejbaum on his blog: “Sure we had our moments, as with any hypergrowth company, but it certainly was a great kick for me to work with Ben from the early days and see this company evolve.” Like Bejbaum, the founder of another Atlas portfolio company, NetVibes founder Tariq Krim stepped back to the board three weeks ago.

Dailymotion is in a growth phase, currently trying to monetise its growing traffic and grappling with a lawsuit from French TV network TF1. It’s targeting 10 million euros and it’s not inconceivable that TF1 will seek an equity stake in return for dropping its suit.

(Photo: catalyseurs_numeriques)

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