iVS, a premium in-stream video advertising marketplace based in Singapore, has brought on R2GV as an advisor.

R2GV, launched by Ranga Somanathan, previously CEO of OMG Singapore and Malaysia and Ravi Bhaya, ex-managing director at Publicis Media Indonesia, South Africa, as well as Serviceplan, Germany, will be partnering and supporting iVS’ expansion plans. This entails launching iVS’ premium programmatic marketplace to advertisers via the consolidation of video inventories of premium web-publishers and broadcasters initially in South-East Asia and Australia.

The partnership aims to empower publishing houses to increase independence from walled-garden platforms by providing its OVP (online video player), hosting and streaming infrastructure, as well as dedicated video ad tech, without linking site visitors or viewers out of the publisher’s owned environment. iVS also keeps visitor data and video engagement on-site and through this supports overall platform revenues for publishers, including from display.

L-R: Hari Shankar, Ranga Somanathan, and Milan Reinartz

Milan Reinartz, CEO of iVS had this to say about the partnership “Both Ranga and Ravi are seasoned C- suite level media executives with impressive careers in the media industry. To our luck, we’ve recently been able to onboard them onto the iVS Advisory Board, helping us drive growth in key expansion markets. We believe they will bring tremendous value through their knowledge and relationships in the tech and media space, and help enable our vision of being the leading B2B video streaming and monetisation platform.”

R2GV's Ravi Bhaya.

“Milan and his team at iVS have done a fabulous job in taking a homegrown technology beyond the shores of Singapore. Putting publishers first, iVS business model resonates with R2GV’s purpose of curating quality businesses and enabling them to scale effectively across geographies”, said Ranga Somanathan.

From Munich, Ravi Bhaya added, “since we set up R2GV, our curation purpose has been guided by our Venture Validation Metrics (VVM) model. VVM helps analyse the venture unit economics including the culture fit, R2GV engagement and our role in value creation. iVS sits comfortably under our HomeCourt@R2 practice and we are excited to be working with their team on building out SEA’s leading programmatic marketplace for video.”

“Having spent considerable time in the digital media buy side of things, I have felt the growing need for digital media planning to look beyond the walls of walled gardens. With that in mind, we successfully built the iVS premium programmatic video marketplace offering, off our robust OVP stack partnerships with premium publishers. With R2GV partnership, we have added the firepower to propel ourselves further towards the objectives of growth in our current markets and opening up promising new markets” concluded Hari Shankar, iVS’ chief revenue officer and former CEO of Singapore Media Exchange.