Playable Inc

Playable

Industry| Marketing and advertising
Founded| 2016; 9 years ago (2016)
Founder|

* Bob Hitching
* Dr. Phillip Wing

Headquarters| Sunnyvale, California

Key people

* Anthony Mansour
* David Bradbury
* Jim Pravetz

Website| playable.video

Playable is a video email technology provider headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It was founded by Bob Hitching and Dr. Phillip Wing in 2016, with the aim of optimizing video marketing, starting with video email marketing, using artificial intelligence technology and its unique dataset of what video content works best.[1][2][3]

Playable is best known for offering unique marketing solutions via patented video email technology that helps marketers to gain traction with their email marketing campaigns and increase click-through rates, post-click engagement metrics, and the ROI of video marketing. Since its inception, Playable has been successfully used by multiple fortune 500 companies across the world including Warner Bros, Foxtel, ASICS, HBO Max, ESPN, RedBull, and others.[4]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Funding
* 3 Products and services
* 3.1 Video Email
* 3.2 AI Video
* 3.3 Live Video Email
* 4 In the media
* 5 References
* 6 External links

## History[edit]

Even though Playable’s operations began in 2016, the process of establishing the company started in 2007, when Clemente Naftali filed the patent for “Method to display a video in an email.”[5] Later this patent was acquired by Dr. Phillip Wing, who played an integral part in the foundation of Playable. Dr. Phillip Wing partnered with Bob Hitching with the help of Peter Wallace, who together decided to establish Playable.[6]

The video email patent was held by Vidiense Pty. Ltd. of Australia, which was restructured as Playable Pty. Ltd. and became the parent of California-based Playable Inc.

The initial goal of Playable was to solve the long-standing video email market fragmentation problem of video content being playable on the wide variety of email clients that people use on a variety of desktop and mobile devices, under a variety of networking conditions.[7]

Bob Hitching was appointed CEO of Playable, and Dr. Phillip Wing was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors.[8]

In 2016, Playable began to provide video email services for early US customers, including two leading Hollywood content studios. In 2017, the founding team was joined by email entrepreneur David Bradbury, digital marketing specialist Anthony Mansour, and video-tech engineer Jim Pravetz. In the same year, the company launched its debut self-service Video Email product. By the end of 2017, Playable delivered video content into 10 million emails.[9]

To make it easy for customers to continue using their favorite video and email technologies, Playable integrated its product with video platforms including Youtube and Vimeo, and with several other email service providers such as Mailchimp, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget), SendGrid and Emarsys. Another patent “System and Method for Algorithmic Editing of Video Content” was filed by Playable in the same year.[10]

In 2020, Playable partnered with Shutterstock and iStock by Getty Images to provide a library of stock videos to customers that could be added to their email marketing campaigns. In the same year, Ben Naftzger, formerly of Atlassian, joined as an Advisor and Board Member.[11]

## Funding[edit]

In 2016, Playable raised seed funding of $0.5M from Hammerfest Investments and was awarded an Accelerating Commercialisation grant of $0.4M from AusIndustry, the Australian Government’s specialist business program delivery division in the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.[12]

In 2018, Playable raised $0.5M from Avirko and was awarded a second Accelerating Commercialisation grant of $0.4M from AusIndustry.

## Products and services[edit]

### Video Email[edit]

Playable Video Email integrates with Mailchimp, Salesforce, Emarsys, Braze, Iterable, Klaviyo, MailerLite, Omnisend, SendGrid, Oracle Bronto, and other email service providers.[13]

### AI Video[edit]

Playable’s AI Video product, leverages computer vision technology to analyze and optimize marketing videos, to highlight the sections that generate the highest engagement and thus help marketers optimize achieve more with their video marketing.[14]

### Live Video Email[edit]

Playable Live Video Email, launched in 2019, allows marketers to stream live video content into email inboxes.

## In the media[edit]

## References[edit]

1. ↑ "martechcube". martechcube. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
2. ↑ News 0, Rob Starr In Small Business (2020-03-06). "Playable, Shutterstock, iStock Partnership". Small Business Trends. Retrieved 26 May 2021. `{{cite web}}`: `|first1=` has generic name (help)
3. ↑ "iterable". iterable. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
4. ↑ "newsfilecorp". newsfilecorp. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
5. ↑ "patents google". patents google. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
6. ↑ "Alternatives to Animated GIFs - The Akamai Blog". blogs.akamai.com. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
7. ↑ "emarsys". emarsys. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
8. ↑ Blackiston, Hannah (2019-05-23). "Pacific becomes first publisher to offer in-email video with Playable partnership". Mumbrella. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
9. ↑ Cross, Tim (2020-03-11). "Why Has Video Been Slow to Take Off in Email Marketing?". VideoWeek. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
10. ↑ "Telco OVO Mobile buys AI-driven NICTA media spinout Incoming Media". Australian Financial Review. 2018-03-04. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
11. ↑ Channel, Growth (2020-02-19). "AI Marketing Trends To Watch Out For in 2020". Medium. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
12. ↑ "Playable Announces Global Partnership with Emarsys | MarTech Advisor". www.martechadvisor.com. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
13. ↑ "Do emails with video have a higher open rate?". Animated Explainer Videos - Switch Video - Explainer Video Production Company. 2014-05-27. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
14. ↑ "Oasis sees 175% increase in campaign revenue through targeted video marketing". InternetRetailing. Retrieved 26 May 2021.

## External links[edit]

* Official Website
* Playable on Facebook
* Playable on Twitter
* Playable on LinkedIn