ScanScout lands Time Warner Investment, and a New Board

Online video start-up ScanScout landed some pretty impressive street cred today, with a strategic investment from Time Warner and the formation of its own board of directors.

Contextual video ad placement, via the company’s Brand Protector system, helped get the attention of Time Warner’s Investment arm, which contributed an undisclosed to the ScanScout. Time Warner is also getting a seat on the company’s board. Rachel Lam of Time Warner joined as a Board Observer, while the rest of the board is ScanScout President Waikit Lau; CTO Steven Lee; CEO Doug McFarland; Chris Fralic of FirstRound Capital; David Orfao and Neil Sequeira of General Catalyst Partners; Digitas COO Jim Rossman and Paul Vidich formerly of AOL and Warner Music Group.

Doug McFarland, CEO of ScanScout, dropped me a line after coming out of a meeting with his new board (which, not surprisingly, ran into overtime).

“For a start up, even though we’ve had a lot of notoriety, having a major media company say this is interesting enough to invest in is an overwhelming compliment. They are a great partner. I’m just really impressed not only with Time Warner but with the board in general,” he told me. “This is one board where you can’t say they don’t understand our business, cause they really do and everything they talk to us about is really helpful.”