Ooyala has closed $10 million of its series C funding round. Current investors, including Sierra Ventures, participated in the round. New investor, Rembrandt Venture Partners, led the funding event. As part of the investment, In Sik Rhee, general partner at Rembrandt, will be joining the Ooyala Board of Directors. With this round, Ooyala has raised $20 million.

The popularity of online video has surged in Europe over the past twelve months as more Internet users have access to faster connections. Over 20 per cent of Europe’s 115 million broadband households have watched a film or TV programme online in the last six months. In the UK, Google sites like YouTube and broadcasters’ catch-up TV services have made watching online video a mainstream activity. 4.7 billion online videos were watched in April 2009, an increase of 47 per cent on the previous year.

Ooyala intends to build on the success of its US business and expand its European operations that already support premium media owner clients such as Premiership Football club Arsenal FC. Trevor Diamond, head of technology for Arsenal Broadband Ltd stated: “Having carefully considered the alternatives, we chose Ooyala’s comprehensive end-to-end video platform as a superior service. It enables us to develop new insights into viewer behaviours and leaves us with multiple options as to how we monetise our premium content.”

CEO Jay Fulcher and chief technology officer and co-founder Sean Knapp will be speaking at Streaming Media Europe, in London on October 15th and 16th.