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February 26, 2008
Stockholm's Keybroker Raises €5M
Sweden's Keybroker has raised €5M ($7.5M) to be used to further expand in to the UK, France and Germany from its Nordic base. The firm specializes in search marketing where it faces tough competition from such US firms as iCrossing and Efficient Frontier. But apparently those companies are not strong yet in Europe. Keybroker says it grew over 500% in 2007 with clients such as Absolut Vodka and eBookers (its CTO came from eBookers). Investor Growth Capital led the round.
We have been hearing from search marketers that the gig is up. As Google's market share closes in on total world domination what value does a search marketing firm give you? Well we understand that Google's market share in Sweden is 95% or so leading us to believe that Keybroker must be great at selling.
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2008-02-19
Nordic search marketing is expanding - Keybroker accelerates with Investor Growth Capital
Investor Growth Capital (IGC), the wholly owned venture capital arm of Investor AB, invests € 5 M in leading Nordic search specialist Keybroker AB. The capital injection will be used to continue development of Keybroker’s search advertising system CampaignControl™, to reinforce Keybroker’s Nordic market position and drive Keybroker’s further expansion in to the UK, France and Germany.
Fredrik Arnander, founder of Keybroker, will lead the European expansion as new group CEO. Co-founder Fredrik Holmén will head Keybroker’s continued development of world class technology for result-based online marketing as President of Products & Technology.
- The search advertising market is worth close to € 1.5 billion in the UK alone this year and is continuing to grow with double-digit figures across Europe. This is a new global market and with Investor Keybroker has found a perfect industrial and international partner, says Fredrik Arnander.
- The future of advertising is digital, result based and exactly measurable. The right technology will be the difference between winning and losing in this financially driven market. At Keybroker, we are very excited to increase and accelerate our systems development and to launch new winning products, says Fredrik Holmén.
Keybroker has quickly established a leading role in the Scandinavian search market through an innovative pricing model, advanced technology and a proactive international delivery centre. Keybroker’s clients include leading internet travel companies the Opodo Group and eBookers, financial services company American Express and world class brands such as Absolut Vodka. The main competitors are US based firms such as iCrossing, Efficient Frontier and Advertising.com. Keybroker grew in excess of 500% in 2007.
- The market for online advertising is growing fast and the media market is evolving in a fundamental way. In Keybroker we found a company that is driving this change, has a proven track record and the potential to play a leading role in the European online market, says Mikael Johnsson,
For additional information, please contact:
Fredrik Arnander, Tel. +46 8 510 617 00, E-mail fredrik.arnander@keybroker.com
Read more about Keybroker at www.keybroker.com
Mikael Johnsson, Investor Growth Capital, Tel. +46 8 614 20 00, E-mail mikael.johnsson@investorab.com
Read more about Investor Growth Capital at www.investorab.com
About Keybroker
Keybroker delivers increased online sales for major advertisers through search advertising (sponsored links) on the Internet, from an international Delivery Centre in Stockholm. Keybroker develops advanced technology – the CampaignControl™ platform – for large scale campaign management and automated advertising processes. Keybroker AB is the parent company of Keybroker Scandinavia (operations in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark), led by managing director Jennie Skogsborn.
About Investor Growth Capital
Investor Growth Capital is the wholly owned venture capital arm of Investor AB (Investor). Investor, publicly traded on the Stockholm exchange, is the largest listed industrial holding company in the Nordic region. Since its formation in the mid-1990s, Investor Growth Capital has continued to invest in high-quality, growth-oriented companies, primarily in the information technology and healthcare industries, in North America, Northern Europe and Asia.
2008-02-19
Posted at 10:02 PM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack | Permalink
EUR 54M For Online Ad Net Adconion
EUR 54M for Adconion (fka EuroClick) is a watershed moment for European venture capital. The investment was led by Index Ventures, who were joined by existing investor Wellington Partners.The company boasts that the financing is the largest online media venture investment in European history and for once a funding announcement cannot be blamed for hyperbole.
In a world where there are half a dozen new ad networks launched before lunch, what sets Adconion apart to make investors so confident? The closest we can tell is a) they like management b) Adconion has rolled out globally, in contrast to other ad networks of their size which have felt uncomfortable leaving North America. Adconion would seem to be M&A bait for the likes of Advertising.com, Microsoft and others as at some point they turn their eyes outside the US. The management draw is CEO Tyler Moebius whose background included being co-founder of TrafficMarketplace (TMP) as a co-founder in early 2001. Before that he was a Series A investor and one of the first 10 employees at Avenue A.
Founded in 2004, Adconion plans to use a quarter of its new funding to expand its US operations, half to invest in new technology and the rest for acquisitions.
We have to say, we have never heard great assessments of Adconian by users. Payouts are ho-hum and there seems to be no special technology, however, they have managed to do what other ad networks have struggled with - hire ad sales-people to book IOs in Europe so that European sites have someone other than Google to turn to for their remnant inventory. For US sites, they get some reward from their European traffic. And as the dollar has plummeted vs. the Euro those meager payouts get more significant.
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Posted at 04:47 AM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack | Permalink
February 22, 2008
Rumor Mill: Google Sniffing The Ukraine's Bigmir)net
We discount this rumor, not due to the source or the logic but just because it seem like a convenient balloon to get people in the West to take notice of the Ukraine's igmir)net. Quintura's Yakov is passing on the rumor that Google may pay as much as $100M for the Ukrainian portal which boasts over over 2.5M unique monthly users. Yakov's rumor logic is that Google is still smarting over its decision not to pull the trigger on a potential buyout of Mail.ru.
A complication is that Bigmir)net is owned by the Ukrainian media group KP Media which floated on the Ukrainian stock exchange in July 2006. Its doubtful that Google or others would want to buy a public company in The Ukraine but on the other hand KP Media would surely part with Bigmir)net for the right price.
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Posted at 06:05 AM | Posted to Media | TrackBack | Permalink
February 20, 2008
An American Is The Blogging Czar of Russia
Although there have been no news to break on Russia's SUP-Fabrik, BusinessWeek profiled the firms' founder Andrew Paulson. SUP did make news late last year when it paid a rumored $30M for the blog platform LiveJournal from SixApart.
Paulson in his penthouse office with panoramic views in Moscow's Smolenskaya district.
The profile does fill in some grey area in the SUP story. The money behind the firm comes via Paulson's partner Russian banker Alexander Mamut. Also, its interesting that Paulson has never experienced business success. Rather he was a failed novelist and high fashion photographer before moving to Russia and falling into the local online publishing scene.
Forbes pegs Mamut's Fortune at just shy of $1B
Read - BusinessWeek
Posted at 09:03 PM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Russia's LogneX Funded For Web-based Inventory Management
Yakov at Quintura tells us that Ambient Sound Investments, the investment fund that we have reported on from four founding Estonian engineers of Skype, invested $200K for a 30% stake in LogneX, a Moscow-based software development company that will shortly launch MoySklad (Russian for MyWarehouse). MoySklad is online inventory management Web service to small and medium-sized businesses in Russia. It's similar to products like NetSuite . Users will pay a monthly subscription fee of $50 per user.
The startup was founded in January 2008 by Oleg Alexeev and Askar Rahimberdiev who both previously worked at OilSpace.
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Posted at 06:40 PM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
Autodesk Buys Parisian Gaming AI Firm Kynogon
Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK) is acquiring Kynogon, which makes Kynapse artificial intelligence middleware. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Kynapse is used by game developers such as Electronic Arts, Activision, Bethesda Softworks, Lionhead Studios, Midway, Real Time Worlds, SEGA, Sony Online Entertainment, Spark Unlimited, THQ and Turbine. Available for the PlayStation2, PLAYSTATION3, PSP, Xbox, Xbox360, GameCube and the PC, Kynapse has been used in the development of more than 60 game titles including Crackdown, Alone in the Dark 5, Fable 2, Sacred 2 and The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. Kynapse has also been used outside the gaming sector by EADS and British Aerospace Systems as an AI solution.
As seen in this video, Kynapse gives characters spatial awareness, enabling them to realistically navigate digital environments.
Kynogon was founded in 2000 by Pierre Pontevia.
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Posted at 06:19 PM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
February 15, 2008
UK's Holiday Watchdog Site Bought By TripAdviser
TripAdvisor has paid an undisclosed amount for Holiday Watchdog, a UK-based user-generated travel site.
TripAdvisor is a US powerhouse in the travel sector which is owned by Expedia Nasdaq: EXPE).
Holiday Watchdog says it gets around 1M unique users each month. Holiday Watchdog, which was launched by Chris Brown and Chris Clarkson in 2004, will join Seatguru, CruiseCritic and TravelPod in the TripAdvisor Media Network of sites.
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Posted at 05:11 AM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
February 14, 2008
The a:c Is Hands Down The Best. Bragster Raises $4M From Intel
Visit Bragster and you are bound to read some idiot get in your face about how he banged three chicks before lunch on his yacht on route to his crib in Greece. If this is your cup of tea have at it.
London's Bragster raised $3.5M in a first round of funding led by Intel Capital. Indeed Bragster's traffic has come out of nowhere. We assume that Intel did their research to see if this is natural or paid traffic. The company says it has had 800K visitors in its first 12 months.
The company is led by Wim Vernaeve, a former Morgan Stanley banker (which he boasts is the best frickin bank in London.)
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Press Release Source: Bragster
Daredevil Social Network Bragster Secures Intel Capital Venture Funding
Wednesday February 13, 10:36 am ET
LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bragster, a leading social network for dares and social bets, today announced it closed a $3.5 million Series A round of venture capital funding led by Intel Capital, the global investment arm of Intel Corp. The funds will be used to support future product launches, scale the team, accommodate new partners’ requests and market the site.
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The funding comes at a key moment for the year-old site, which has built an audience of 800,000 viewers in just 12 months. As social networking has spiralled upward to millions of users and $1.2 billion in advertising revenues last year, its success has a price: The leading social networks have become too large, unwieldy and homogenized for many users. Bragster founders Wim Vernaeve and Bertrand Bodson are leveraging the audience shift to connect with more targeted communities. They believe a site with higher-value content that targets a specific audience will create more engaged users and, by extension, a more attractive value proposition for advertisers.
“How many times have you told a friend ’I bet you can't do this?’ That’s the inspiration behind Bragster,” said Vernaeve, who worked at Morgan Stanley in London before launching the site in 2007. “Bragster was founded to record all the crazy things our friends were bragging about but never seemed to happen. There's a competitive spirit in each of us and challenges everywhere, and Bragster is available to record and enrich them.”
Bodson, who co-founded Bragster after working at Amazon.com, said the site is a unique entertainment channel. “Every story has its own build up and rich media content, created by our community of users. Intel Capital‘s role as an investor will help us write the next exciting chapter in our young company’s history.”
“The social networking market segment is experiencing tremendous growth but has yet to find an optimal business model,” said Alain-Gabriel Courtines, Investment Director at Intel Capital. “Bragster’s understanding of social media along with its broad entertainment appeal positions it to capitalize on this opportunity and create a richer, deeper experience for both advertisers and users.”
Intel Capital led the funding round, joined by David Frankel through Puressence Limited. Frankel previously invested in companies including GetMeIn and SiteAdvisor, sold to Ticketmaster and McAfee, respectively.
About Bragster
Bragster is the place to dare your friends online and brag about it after posting evidence. It combines the power of online communities with the fun of having dares, challenges and bets among friends. The company was founded by Wim Vernaeve and Bertrand Bodson in 2006 and the site launched in January 2007, reaching over 800,000 unique visitors from over 150 countries by the end of its first year. The largest markets by far are the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. More information can be found at http://www.bragster.com.
About Intel Capital
Intel Capital, Intel's global investment organization, makes equity investments in innovative technology start-ups and companies worldwide. Intel Capital invests in a broad range of companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting enterprise, home, mobility, health, consumer Internet, semiconductor manufacturing, and cleantech. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$7.5 billion in approximately 1,000 companies in 45 countries. In that timeframe, 168 portfolio companies have gone public on various exchanges around the world and 212 were acquired or participated in a merger. In 2007, Intel Capital invested about US$639 million in 166 deals with approximately 37 percent of funds invested outside the United States. For more information on Intel Capital and its differentiated advantages, visit www.intelcapital.com.
Contact:
Blanc and Otus Public Relations for Bragster
Meredith Obendorfer, 415-856-5167
mobendorfer@blancandotus.com
Source: Bragster
Posted at 06:43 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
February 13, 2008
Sun Buys German/Russian Innotek
Sun Microsystems says it will acquire Innotek for an undisclosed amount. Founded in June 2000, Innotek is a Germany-headquartered, Russian build vendor of open source desktop virtualization software.
Since its release in January 2007, VirtualBox was downloaded over 4M times. The product competes with another Russian developed product Parallels from SWSoft. According to a 2007 survey by DesktopLinux.com, VirtualBox is the third most popular software package for running Windows programs on Linux desktops.
Read - Quintura blog
Posted at 06:46 AM | Posted to Specialized Software | TrackBack | Permalink
February 12, 2008
Seatwave Raises $25M for Euro StubHub
SeatWave has raised $25M in Series C funding. Fidelity Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners and Adinvest. The company had previously raised $11M. Fidelity has profited from this space as it had previously invested in StubHub which was bought by eBay.
Seatwave is an online fan-to-fan ticket exchange. The UK site launched in February 2007 and Seatwave is already in the top 5 ticket sites according to Hitwise. Seatwave launched in Germany in September and Holland in October. More European markets will follow soon.
Seatwave faces competition in Europe from VC-backed Viagogo, however, there are a number of different models in online ticket sales and at least for now Viagogo and Seatwave are on different tracks. Viagogo is doing deals with large European clubs to sell their tickets whereas Seatwave is really more of a Craigslist for people to post and sell their spare tickets.
The company is led by Joe Cohen who has a sharp resume. He was COO/SVP International at Match.com, VP/GM, Europe at Ticketmaster.com and new markets GM at Citysearch.
Get your Dizzee Rascal tickets on Seatwave while they last
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Posted at 12:41 AM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
February 09, 2008
Interview: Lars Langusch of Holtzbrinck Ventures
Lars Langusch (34) is a partner at Holtzbrinck Ventures (formerly Holtzbrinck Networxs), which is German publishing group Georg von Holtzbrinck's 8-year old corporate venture company.
Langusch joined the venture team in 2000 and along with Konstantin Urban and Andreas Arntzen, set up online dating company Parship, which has become a market leader in its segment.
He led operations at Parship until 2003 and since then he's been active in establishing American-German joint venture audible.de and experteer (a job search engine for the better paid category of job-seeker). He was also involved in his firm's studivz investments.
Today Langusch is responsible for 11 companies and says that what he enjoys most about his work are the discussions – and sometimes heated arguments – with portfolio firm founders.
Read on for our QandA with him, including a bonus Fixture, Fad, or Feature quiz about some Web trends that he did with us via email.
Media companies, particularly in Germany, are investing in early stage Internet ventures. How does this compare with activity during bubble era?
During the bubble era a lot of investors tended to be overly optimistic about the potential outcome of yet unproven business models. I think we all learned our lesson from that era.
We also shouldn’t forget that for the media companies, the internet downturn came along with an economic climate and a decrease in ad-spending that heavily affected not only their online ventures but most especially their traditional businesses. This might explain why some of the traditional media companies needed a little longer to invest into online companies again; they simply were preoccupied with restructuring their off-line businesses.
However, the good news is that during the downturn a lot of internet companies have grown more or less under the radar and are now generating millions of profits per month. These successful online companies have shown the potential of the internet for investors and have helped renew big media’s interest in online investments.
Since the dotcom-bubble, there is now a new generation of teenagers who are the first generation to have grown up with the internet. This generation is not wondering whether social networks, blogs or mobile apps are just a fad or not. Instead, they have never known a life without these apps. Just talk to your own interns and I am sure you will hear the same things I hear from our interns here at Holtzbrinck Ventures: For example, they don’t watch linear TV anymore, many of them don’t even own a TV set. They don’t understand the very idea that viewers should organize their days around the rigid programming schedules of TV-stations.
Some media companies, particularly ours, are very much aware that they have to invest into internet companies with business models that will substitute and/or reinvent part of their traditional businesses.
Holtzbrinck was one of the few vcs that invested in the downturn. Tell us about the investments you made when everyone else would not touch an online venture?
Compared to today where there is a real rush for the good investments, the competition amongst investors was very low back then. All our business models had one thing in common: a clear focus on revenue.
Only a few people believed so strongly in their ideas that they quit their jobs and started a company - one could call them "crazy" but that`s exactly what you have to be as an entrepreneur.
The first “crazy” team we invested in during the downturn was gameduell. That was in 2003. In the same year we acquired a third of bol.nl which today is the largest online retailer in The Netherlands with revenues of about €170M last year.
In 2004, we initiated Audible.de, a joint-venture with the nasdaq listed mother company audible.com (recently acquired by amazon)
What is your group's track record like, exits vs investments. What did you learn from failures?
Some of our most interesting exits were Parship, studivz, bol.nl, Jobline, Buecher.de, booxtra, mobileview, immowelt, and recently cember.net which was acquired by Xing.
We have made 55 investments so far and the number of write-offs is fortunately limited to a handful.
We don`t accept the 80:20 rule that says 80% of your companies will fail. Since we are involved at a very early stage, we also have the chance to change the direction of the company if we see that the first idea doesn`t take off.
In 1999/2000 we tended to invest in businesses that might substitute the traditional business of a media company, such as Jobline, a company that went IPO in 2000 and was then acquired by Monster.
Companies that failed in that time were a) just too early or b) they lacked a sustainable and seasonable business model.
Compared with the year 2000 our investment strategy has changed a lot. In 2000 it was very cash intensive to set up internet start ups, whereas today you can launch a complete website for less than 20.000 Euro with monthly server costs of 100 Euro.
So, testing ideas and founding your own company has become much easier. As a consequence, we decided to invest into more companies with lower investment amounts, see if they get traction and only then invest a larger amount.
It feels like there is a bit of a frenzy on in Germany - I cannot keep track of all the early stage deals anymore. Fortunately, Deutsche Startups is there to cover the news. What is the rush?
Part of today`s rush is that there are a lot of marketable opportunities out there. As I said, the entry costs to launch a start-up have decreased dramatically. In addition, Google-Adsense enables them to earn some money without having a product to sell.
Another factor is that there are a lot of business angels investing their own money into internet companies – and this money is very ‘smart’ because it mainly comes from serial internet entrepreneurs who support the teams, know how to set up a company, how to connect them with partners and clients, and how to shape a product.
Certainly, to some extent, there are spaces were a few companies doing nearly the same can coexist, as is the case in the online dating industry. But there are also market segments where there is only room for one or two companies.
We noticed that in Germany, the distance between a market leader and the number two tends to be much larger than in the U.S. This phenomenon might explain why there is such a rush in Germany to stake your claim for any new business model that might prove successful.
Fixture, fad, or feature?
Bookmarking - Feature, instapaper is quite nice and very simple
Tagging - Feature, not very much used in Germany yet
Social Networking - Fixture!
Crowdsourcing - Fixture, and quite nice to reduce content complexity as long as the “crowd” has something in common with your own interests
Corporate Blogs - Feature
Posted at 07:42 AM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink
February 06, 2008
Recent Euro Deals: Trayport and Anyware Acquired; eBuddy and Badoo Funded
M&A
GFI Group, a provider of software for trading in stocks and securities, acquired UK-based Trayport, a 15 year old real-time e-trading software company with a flair for energy stock, for £84M (€164M) includes payment for working capital. Trayport, which does not appear to have raised venture capital, has annual sales of £14M (approximately $28M).
Wireless technologies company Wavecom has acquired VC-backed Anyware, a longtime partner. According to WirelessWeek, the transaction was finalized for a cash payment to Anyware shareholders of $13.5M, plus $2.2M placed in escrow for "customary warranty" provisions. According to this reporter's files, Labege, France-based Anyware raised about €3.8M since founding in 2001 from Seventure and IRDI.
Investments
Prime Technology Ventures has invested €6.5M into eBuddy according to earlier reports this week in TechCrunch and RedHerring.
Finam, a Russian investor has put $30M in Badoo, reports Quintura blog a recent Google Zeitgeist Socnet Star as we reported here.
Posted at 05:39 PM | Posted to | TrackBack | Permalink
Finnish Mobile TV Middleware Startup Raises
Nexit Ventures announced it has invested in Finland-based Axel Technologies, a DVB-H mobile TV middleware vendor that also supplies the mobile client software. The product name is Salmonstream.
Co-investing in this undisclosed-sized round is existing investor Finnish Industry Investment Ltd., a state-backed fund manager.
Pekka Salonoja of Nexit Ventures said in a statement, "The company is already positioned among the top five developers of mobile TV middleware globally, with a track record of successful deployments at top-line customers including AMD and Thomson.".
Posted at 12:01 PM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Former Skype Team Invests With Intel in FlowPlay
Showing that it can bring in some VC specialists to portfolio firms, Ambient Sound Investments (an investment firm formed by several former Skype engineers) has brought in Intel Capital for a $3.7M Series A round of financing for casual gaming technology company FlowPlay.
The Estonian fund informs us that it co-led the new round after making a seed investment mid-year 2007.
Crunchbase describes FlowPlay, which is based in Seattle, as a virtual world community built around browser-based casual games.
Posted at 08:29 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
VC-Backed Affiliate Marketing Firm in UK Acquired By AOL
We received the news yesterday that AOL has acquired the VC-backed company behind buy.at, a five year old UK affiliate marketing company. No disclosure on transaction size.
It is the second acquisition that AOL has made in Europe in recent months to bulk up its Advertising.com business. The other was its acquisition of AdTech in Germany
This deal, as paidcontent points out is meant to give some affiliate marketing mojo to advertising.com.
Europe's M&A has seen several affiliate marketing-related M&A deals of greater than €100M this past year or so, as we have reported, with Zanox getting bought for €214M (it was not VC-backed, we note) and Tradedoubler doing some acquiring too. Publicly-traded Tradedoubler was itself the target of a failed multi-hundred million euro bid to acquire by AOL (see second paragraph in this link).
AOL ACQUIRES UK’S BUY.AT AFFILIATE NETWORK FOR ADVERTISING.COM
Leading Provider of Ecommerce Affiliate Solutions Will Expand Advertising.com’s Performance Based Offerings to Advertisers and Publishers
LONDON – Feb 5, 2008 – AOL announced today that it has acquired buy.at, a leading independent affiliate network that provides a platform for performance based e-commerce marketing programs to advertisers and publishers. buy.at will operate as a wholly-owned business unit of Advertising.com, part of AOL’s Platform-A organization.
“This transaction will position Advertising.com to serve merchant and retail advertisers with the industry's most comprehensive set of e-commerce offerings,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Advertising.com. “By leveraging our web advertising network and search engine marketing services and now buy.at’s innovative affiliate network we can provide advertisers a wide array of marketing solutions to drive sales and other transactions. We are looking forward to accelerating the expansion of buy.at’s affiliate network in the United Kingdom, United States and other European countries.”
buy.at, recently named the UK’s 9th fastest growing private technology company in the Sunday Times Tech Track, is an affiliate marketing network in which affiliates (publishers) partner with advertisers (merchants) to enhance sales growth by driving consumers to those companies' websites. Unlike traditional display advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) models, an advertiser only pays when a visitor to its site takes action (such as making a purchase or signing up for a free trial). buy.at has consistently been a leader in technology innovation and development, with recent releases such as its ContentEngine, which allows retailers to promote their products and offers dynamically on affiliate websites. buy.at was also the first network to launch an integrated affiliate solution for users of social networking sites, working with WAYN, the travel-focused social network. And through its buy.at leads division, the company sources high-quality consumer leads for merchants in the financial services industry. The buy.at affiliate network was founded in 2002 and is backed by venture capitalist DFJ Esprit.
“The combination of Advertising.com and buy.at provides a significant opportunity for advertisers to leverage an expanded publisher base with even more tools and services, creating a unique offering in the market,” said Kevin Cornils, CEO of buy.at. “buy.at has always focused on providing top-class customer service and customized technology to leading retailers and e-commerce businesses and we are looking forward to extending that to Advertising.com’s client base. Planned investment from AOL and Advertising.com will also allow the buy.at affiliate network to continue its growth and to maintain and even accelerate its market-leading offerings of products and services for our existing clients as well.”
“Within this fast-paced environment, only networks that can grow, develop and innovate with their advertisers and publishers will continue to deliver higher levels of incremental revenue opportunities,” said Brendan Condon, Managing Director of Advertising.com International. “Advertisers are increasingly coming to realize that along side display and search engine marketing, affiliate marketing needs to be an important part of their online strategies. We are excited to begin working with buy.at as we continue to increase our network offerings in the UK and throughout Europe.”
The acquisition comes as affiliate marketing in the UK grew by an estimated 45% in 2007. According to research published in E-consultancy’s Affiliate Marketing Networks Buyer’s Guide, total affiliate marketing sales were more than £3 billion compared to £2.16 billion in 2006. This research continues to illustrate the increased acceptance by advertisers to embrace this form of marketing as a way to drive online sales.
With offices in London and Newcastle in the United Kingdom and in New York in the U.S., buy.at employs approximately 70 people and offers affiliate marketing in both the U.S. and UK and counts over 200 leading ecommerce businesses as its clients. Advertising.com also has operations in the U.S. and ten other countries, nine in Europe plus Japan. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
buy.at is the fifth advertising acquisition AOL has made in the past 12 months. Last year, AOL acquired Quigo, a contextual advertising firm; TACODA, a behavioral targeting firm; Third Screen Media, the leading mobile advertising network and software provider; and AdTech AG, the leading international online ad-serving company based in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2006, AOL acquired Lightningcast, a leader in delivering advertising solutions for on-demand, live and downloaded video content across the Web. AOL acquired Advertising.com, which operates the largest third-party display network, in 2004.
About AOL
AOL® is a global Web services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services runs one of the largest Internet access businesses in the U.S., and provides a full set of advertising solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), AOL LLC and its subsidiaries have operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.
About Advertising.com
Advertising.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL LLC, is a global online advertising services company. The company offers a fully integrated suite of online advertising solutions, including display advertising, search engine marketing, managed affiliate placements and video advertising. These solutions are powered by Advertising.com’s award-winning optimization technology and industry-leading third-party display advertising network, which reaches more unique visitors each month than any other online property.
About buy.at
buy.at, backed by DFJ Esprit and founded in 2002, is leading the next generation of affiliate marketing and drives significant online sales for over 200 leading ecommerce brands. With a specialized affiliate network focus, buy.at is committed to producing campaigns that add value to their client's current marketing strategy and drive maximum online results. Each client benefits from a customized package of industry leading commercial and technical innovations, supported by a pro-active account management team of marketing and technical experts. Having pioneered the idea of an 'open network', buy.at ensures that its clients build strong relationships with leading affiliates, managing their brand more effectively and driving market-leading sales volumes. buy.at is the trading name for Perfiliate Limited and Perfiliate Technologies Limited.
Posted at 06:02 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
February 05, 2008
VC-backed Lovefilm Gets Amazon as Investor and Wins Its UK/German Biz
Lovefilm, an online DVD rental service provider, is taking over Amazon Europe’s DVD business in the UK and Germany in a deal that could increase the UK's company's subscriber base to 900K.
The transaction subject to regulatory approval, will also make Amazon its largest shareholder, according to CEO Simon Calver in an interview with alarm:clock euro. "It has a minority stake, but it is the largest shareholder now," he said.
Lovefilm has several other shareholders as a result of its merger with Video Island in 2006 (a 50:50 merger), namely Arts Alliance Media, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and DFJ Esprit.
This is the latest example of consolidation in this relatively young category of DVD rental and video downloads, what with Glowria, which did several acquistions itself, getting folded into Netgem (our report here).
On that topic Calver said: "Starting up a DVD rental business is easy, but getting the customer experience right is not as easy."
He said that some £20M has been raised by the firm, which has been invested in branding, marketing, and some small acquisitions, as well as in infrastructure (e.g. CRM software). Lovefilm's platform some features like a recommendation engine. Paidcontent describes some of the other services in an analysis of the deal.
Calver did not disclose sales figures. But it was reported last year in Times Online that the firm did £26M in 2005, a figure that has seen some quick growth and was recognized last year.
Posted at 09:48 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Venere.com Acquires Italian Online Travel Biz
Advent International, a private equity firm, sent us the news that its portfolio company Venere.com, a 13 year old online hotel bookings provider, has acquired Italy's Worldby.com. No disclsoure on terms or size of the transaction.
Venere.com does 20 percent of its business in Italy and has operations in Paris and London. It could be that further acquisitions are in store covering other European countries, as Advent says it likes the "buy and build" strategy.
View Venere.com
Posted at 06:26 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
February 04, 2008
Norwegian Fund Invests in US-based Efficient Motor Team
Norway's Energy Ventures has led a $12M B round in Cerritos, California based Direct Drive Systems Inc, a two year old venture that manufactures high speed permanent magnet motors and generators of the multi-megawatts size. The units have no need for a gearbox, said the firm's backers in a statement, and are smaller, lighter and less maintenance intensive than conventional machinery.
We're reporting it because Energy Ventures is European and one of the handful of VC funds here that has experience in backing growth ventures that sell into the oil and gas industry, which is not exactly the easiest market for startups to break into.
A recent success story is MTEM, one of the top 10 vc-backed trade sales last year. It just raised a new $234M fund on the back of several good exits from previous funds. Energy Ventures has offices in Aberdeen, Stavanger and Houston. The firm is currently recruiting VC professionals.
Read - Energy Ventures announcement pdf
Posted at 11:26 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
Interview: Oliver Jung Business Angel
In a QandA with the alarm:clock euro below, Oliver Jung talks about some of his successful investments, learning from failures, and his criteria for investment.
Oliver Jung is an entrepreneur turned full-time investor and business angel. He started to invest in startups after leaving Deutsche Börse, which had acquired in 2001 his 800-employee Internet and eCommerce consulting company. It had been generating €100M in annual sales at the time of the acquisition.
Since 2003, Jung has invested in more than 50 ventures. In a QandA with the alarm:clock euro below, Jung talks about some of his successful investments, learning from failures, and his criteria for investment.
His first investment was Xing, the now publicly-traded and acquisitive business social network. Jung was one of its initial investors.
Next was Getmobile, a later state investment at a valuation of €10M. His investment "generated 6 times money", Jung said, following a reverse IPO in 2005 in London.
Another early investment was StudiVZ, the youth oriented social networking site, which was acquired in 2007 for a rumored €86M.
Today, Jung said that he has a large number of investments where he is a co-investor and where "networking for the portfolio company" is his role, adding that it is a smaller number where he is actively involved. At any time he is working very closely and actively with five startups, he said.
Q. Most of your investment have been in Germany. Will that continue?
A. I like Poland – it's a good sized economy with 50 to 60 million population. Internet usage is growing. One investments we did there is epuls.pl. But in general I am very active and Germany and will be active in Germany in future.
Q. You have a lot of Internet investments. Is it not risky to have such a concentration of holdings?
A. I am not that into diversification or portfolio management theory. My investments range in size from €10K up to €1M. 50% of all my investments outside the Internet market have failed. So I learned the hard way only to invest where I know my space very well.
Q. What did you learn from the experience of failure - is it possible to turn a startup around?
A. If you have a great team and the idea ends up being a bad one - and the team can change the business scope - it is sometimes possible to turn a startup around. Paypal is such a story, they changed their business scope several times.
If the teams ends up not being great, it is not possible in my opinion. In many cases, I would prefer to
invest in a fresh startup than in a turn-around one, even if the valuation seems to be cheap.
Q. Other recent investments include brands4friends, apomio, adconion, flux.com and lokalisten, all of which we've covered in these pages. You also have a stake in Nanosolar. What is your criteria for an investment?
A. Four things: 1) Does the service solve a problem – make sense? 2) is it a great team ? 3) is there a business model ? 4) does the team know how to generate reach ?
Q. Any dealbreakers?
A. If the service doesn't make any sense to their potential customers.
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Posted at 09:05 AM | Posted to Being European | TrackBack | Permalink
Germany's Odersun Raises $90M for Factory
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures (DHTV) sent us the news this morning that portfolio company Odersun, a thin film solar cell venture, has raised some €61M (about $90M) in finance, including grants, to build its second factory.
A €40M Series B round, is included in that total.
(Image Credit: Odersun)
We checked in with DHTV and it confirmed that Odersun has "proven that it can manufacture in volume" these new thin-film solar cells and modules. The firm's first manufacturing factory is up-and-running and shipping product.
This new equity round was led by Virgin Green Fund (US/UK) with participation from PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (US) and AGF Private Equity (part of Allianz Group) in addition to existing investors DHTV and Advanced Technology & Materials (China).
Caption: Panels are flexible, which means its tech can be used as solar rechargers built- into shoulder bags, but also panels that can be integrated into building facades, and windows.
Odersun says it is using a “reel-to-reel” manufacturing process, which is proprietary to the firm. Its cells are based on Copper-Indium-diSulphide materials (as opposed to silicon which is more common) and their "efficiency is comparable to other thin-film technologies", said DHTV's spokesman.
Greentech Media has a photo of its flexible copper-substrate panel if you are curious.
View Odersun
Posted at 07:58 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
February 01, 2008
Collanos Collaboration Company Raising Series A Round
Collanos, a Swiss/US startup that runs a workplace collaboration platform, sent us the news that it is raising a €3M Series A round, beginning with an investment by Zürcher Kantonalbank.
The company was founded in late 2003 and has raised between $2M and $3M to date, the firm's CEO Peter Helfenstein told the alarm:clock euro.
Collanos Workplace is currently preparing for the release of version 1.3. "It will have a new replication algorithm making team synchronization much more efficient and changes much more available to other team members," he explained.
It is the foundation for upcoming premium services, such as Collanos Permanent Peers (available end of Q2) via Collanos' partners like Translumina Networks, and Collanos Phone premium to launch at end of Q1.
Helfenstein said a roster of 15 people are working for Collanos, some part time or subcontracted, in Switzerland (Zurich), in the U.S. (San Francisco, Provo/Utah, Ukraine (Kharkov) and India (Hyderabad).
Since the launch of version 1.1 Collanos in mid-May 2007, about 10’000 users are registered.
Posted at 09:37 AM | Posted to News And Updates | TrackBack | Permalink
