Israel Innovation 2.0

Amobee Media Systems and Innovid have been named Technology Pioneers 2010 by the World Economic Forum. The two startups along with 24 others, including Twitter and Amiando, were identified for developing new technology that can “change and improve the way business and society operate.”

Here’s a little more about the startups:

Led by CEO Zohar Levkovitz and Gary Schofield, Amobee has developed advertising server technology for mobile operators that dynamically “inserts relevant ads into different mobile entertainment and communication channels” that users can interact with.

Founded in 2006 by Tal Chalozin and CEO Zvika Netter, Innovid provides publishers and advertisers with the ability to monetize online video by integrating brand advertising into relevant video content. Innovids technology enables advertisers “to insert 3D objects into videos post-production” that blend into the rest of the video but still attracts the user to click and interact with it.

As Technology Pioneers, Amobee and Innovid will have access to the World Economic Forum’s elite network of members and can attend the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, among other events.

Editor’s note: This was originally posted on TechAviv.com.

Tal Chalozin (circa 2000)

Business Week has announced that topping its 2008 Best Young European Entrepreneurs reader poll is Innovid’s 27-year old co-founder and chief technology officer, Tal Chalozin.

Innovid was founded by Chalozin and, CEO, Zvika Netter in 2006 and provides a platform “that allows the integration of brand advertising into relevant video content.” The technology promises to solve the problem that publishers and advertisers have faced regarding monetizing online video.

In a post on TechCrunch about Innovid after it received $3 million in Series A funding in March 2008, Mark Hendrickson explained how the technology works as follows:

“The virtual items facilitated by Innovid are basically 3D objects that producers insert into videos post-production. They’re intended to look as realistic as possible so that they blend in with the real physical environment recorded by the video. And yet, they can’t go entirely unnoticed because users are encouraged to click and perform mouse gestures with them to derive additional functionality (for example, to view a popup description about the particular item with links to external resources).”

While the technology is promising and owes a lot to Chalozin’s leadership and innovation, that’s not the only thing that does. Chalozin and others at Innovid have been very active in the past few years in the Israeli technology non-profit, GarageGeeks, which provides a “physical and virtual space for innovative and creative people to introduce, network, expose, create, brainstorm, innovate and build.” In the past year alone, attendance at its monthly events has more than doubled and there is now a need to limit the amount of participants.

It was originally through GarageGeeks that Chalozin and Netter got to know angel investor Jeff Pulver who provided the early funding before the Series A round that has made it possible for Chalozin and Innovid to reach the international level of recognition it has achieved.