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April 29, 2008
UK's Autoquake Raises Gbp6M
Used care online retailer Autoquake has closed a Gbp6M ($11.8M) second round of venture capital funding led by Highland Capital Partners with existing investor Accel Partners. Accel Partners had invested Gbp3M 2006.
Autoquake assists sellers in listing autos on the online auction site by taking photographs of each vehicle and writing up descriptions and specs.
The service initially got some great free publicity by helping England's celebrity's hawk their used vehicles, such as famous footballer David Beckham's first trophy car on eBay - which sold for £6M.
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Posted at 01:55 AM | Posted to eCommerce | TrackBack | Permalink
April 17, 2008
Mobile VoIP's Truphone Raises Further Gbp16.5M
London's Truphone has raised Gbp16.5M ($32.7M) in Series B funding led by undisclosed investors, who were backed by by return backers Burda Digital Ventures, Independent News & Media, Eden Ventures and Wellington Partners Venture Capital.
Truphone is a mobile operator whereby you can get free or low-cost mobile phone calls via the internet.
Truphone recently bought SIM4travel, which it says will enable it to offer low-cost GSM calls worldwide via a travel SIM.
In December 2006, Truphone raised £12.5M ($24.5M) in Series A funding, which was the largest Series A venture funding of 2006 for the tech sector.
Truphone has some very well funded competitors including Jajah and Gizmo.
See a demo of VoIP on the iPhone via Truphone
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Posted at 05:11 PM | Posted to Wireless | TrackBack | Permalink
April 09, 2008
Israeli Search Engine Marketing Firm Kenshoo Wins Backing of London VC Firm
Arts Alliance announced today that it has completed an investment in Kenshoo. Arts Alliance is the second venture capital fund to invest in Kenshoo, joining Sequoia Capital.
Kenshoo's flagship product automates the creation and management of search marketing campaigns. It helps users to manage bids and analyze click fraud among other things.
Kenshoo is led by CEO Yoav Izhar-Prato who previously ran Beijing PrePay.
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A Kenshoo competitor, Marin Software, has also just closed a round of funding. The San Francisco-based firm has raised $7.25M in Series B funding led by Benchmark Capital. Marin feels far more mature than Kenshoo at this point.
Marin charges 5% of search spend for $50K monthly budgets on down to 2% for the largest budgets over $2M per month. The company has attracted more than 25 customers, including Zappos.com and ZipRealty, as well as agency partners such as Avenue A | Razorfish.
Marin is led by CEO and co-founder Chris Lien who was COO at Adteractive.
We have heard a number of insiders speculate that the search engine marketing game is over. As Google consolidates the market and if MSFT succeeds at owning Yahoo there are fewer reasons to pay someone or to buy software to manage this for you. But the size and growth of the market is indeed impressive and leaves plenty of room for startups to growth. JP Morgan says that paid search in the US is expected to grow 23% annually, from $11.8B in 2007 to $26.8B in 2011. Over the same period, markets outside the US are projected to grow 34% annually from $10.2B to $33.1B.
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Posted at 04:47 PM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack | Permalink
London's UTarget Video Ad Network Sells Majority Stake To Fox
FOX Networks has bought a majority stake in Utarget, an online advertising network based in London. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But .Fox Networks picked up 56% of Utarget. In 2007, Utarget received investment from Foresight Partners.
Utarget operates an ad network focused on online video. It owns Britain’s Premium Video Advertising Network which is comprised of more than 600 U.K. Web sites. FOX has already rebranded the firm as Utarget.Fox. They say it will work with Fox Interactive Media Audience Network to provide ads to News Corp sites and third parties.
Utarget was founded in 2000 by CEO Phil Cooper who had launched an internet portal for over- 50s (www.50connect.co.uk) in 2000. He says he sold that business in 2005 "for a 7-figure sum" and raised venture capital in 2006 to expand it into Europe and online video advertising. The firm had previously announced a partnership with Blinkx.
DotFox's CEO says that UTarget was paid a nice multiple on its revenues which he says were north of $9.9M from the last 12 months.
News Corp. and Fox have operated behind the scenes in online advertising but they are putting together a global footprint the likes that only Google and AOL can match. We expect that they might take a stake in a large indie ad network (Tribal Fusion is rumored to be in play). Match the properties that they own plus a powerful ad sales force and technology and you have a monster new player to content with.
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Posted at 01:23 AM | Posted to Advertising | TrackBack | Permalink
