May 30, 2008
Skype Founders Invest in Russian's Enter Media
Russia's Enter Media has raised funding from Skype investor Mangrove Capital Partners and ABRT Fund. Quintura says the amount of the funding may be around $1M. This seems like a very early investment for a tiny Russian market. We had assumed this was a technology company looking to go global but it appears at this point that Enter Media is really just putting its arms around Russian gamers.
View - site
Posted at 06:20 AM | 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.
View - site
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 | 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.
View - site
Posted at 01:23 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 14, 2008
US Ad Networks Buying Europeans. Adviva Media Goes To Specific Media. AdLink Group On The Blocks
Having recently raised $100M with specific aspiration to do M&A deals, Irvine, CA-based ad network Specific Media, an has acquired UK ad network Adviva Media. No financial terms were disclosed. Adviva had raised EUR 6.6M from Kennet Partners.
Generally speaking, the large US ad networks have battled it out domestically. Only the biggest such as Advertising.com have made big moves into Europe. This move by Specific Media gets it an early foothold in the UK as well as France and Germany. Specific Media says that the combined venture will make it the 4th largest ad network in the UK, with a reach of 25.9M unique users.
We expect to see another large European ad network deal shortly with an American buyer. Germany-based AdLink has been put up for sale by its holding company United Internet. Morgan Stanley has been assigned to find a buyer for the ad network. This news was reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, citing anonymous sources.
The report indicated that AdLink Group expects a a three-digit million Euro sum from the sale of the unit, adding that AdLink is valued at about 400M Euros, with 84.3% owned by United Internet.
View - Adviva Site
View - Adlnk site
View - Adviva Site
View - Adlnk site
Adviva HQ
AdLink Group HQ
Posted at 05:31 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 08, 2008
Scotland Ad Tech Startup Rapid Mobile Media Wins GBP 2m
Edinburgh-based Rapid Mobile Media has raised GBP 2M led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). apid Mobile was founded in February 2004 and has launched a white-label platform for mobile advertising. They are not currently boasting of major client users of their mobilie ad platform (Times Online might be an exception), however, they let us know that they count BetFair as a user of their mobile betting product.
The white label approach to mobile advertising sounds sensible but its a slow road to hoe. There are just so many potential users and they take their sweet time. We believe the company will need to raise more cash to get by.
View - site
Press Release Source: Rapid Mobile Media Ltd
Rapid Mobile Media Secures GBP 2m Series B Funding
Thursday March 6, 6:01 am ET
Mobile Advertising & Service Provisioning Platform Provider Welcomes NEA and Alliance Trust Equity Partners as New Investors
EDINBURGH, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rapid Mobile Media Ltd, providers of innovative mobile advertising and mobile application provisioning software platforms, today announced the completion of a second investment round of £2m led by US venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) who were joined by Alliance Trust Equity Partners (ATEP) as new investors in the company. Existing investors Pentech Ventures and Scottish Enterprise’s Scottish Venture Fund also participated in the round.
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The new cash investment will provide Rapid Mobile Media with working capital to expand on current successes and accelerate the commercial deployment of its Ad360 mobile advertising platform and Active Provisioning automatic mobile application deployment technology.
“Rapid Mobile offers a unique approach to solving the device diversity issues that many organisations face when delivering mobile advertising and services”, said Mike Ramsay, Venture Partner at NEA who also joins the Rapid Mobile Media Board as Investor Director. “By enabling the rapid deployment and monetisation of services, we believe Rapid Mobile is ideally positioned to achieve significant success in the rapidly growing mobile advertising market – providing for the delivery of high quality display advertisements both within applications and mobile internet sessions.”
“We are delighted to welcome both NEA and ATEP as new investors to the company,” commented Jeremy Copp, CEO of Rapid Mobile Media “Their experience will provide us with invaluable guidance as we grow the organisation to secure a leadership position within the emerging mobile advertising and mobile services markets. We have already demonstrated the capabilities and robustness of our platforms in key reference customer deployments, now we are in a position to build value within the organisation on the back of current successes”.
Raymond Abbott, Managing Director of Alliance Trust Equity Partners, added: “The seasoned senior management team at Rapid Mobile Media, with their experience of the wireless market and track record of delivering carrier-grade solutions, provides the ideal base for commercial success. This experience, coupled with the company’s proven technology, means that we are excited at the investment prospect that Rapid Mobile provides”. Richard Hope, Investment Director at ATEP, also joins the Rapid Mobile Media Board as Investor Director.
Pentech Ventures and Scottish Enterprise have both previously invested in Rapid Mobile Media, and they both continue their support through further investment in this round. Dr. Sandy McKinnon, Pentech Investment Director and Rapid Mobile Board member, said: “Pentech see great potential for Rapid Mobile to play a key role in shaping the multi-billion dollar global mobile advertising market, and we are delighted to be able to continue to provide support to the company to enable their growing commercial successes”.
“We are proud to support Rapid Mobile Media as a business within the Scottish media and technology industry”, said Neil Ross, Head of the Scottish Venture Fund. “The continuing success of Rapid Mobile is a validation of Scottish Enterprise’s strategy of providing seed and co-investment funding to promising Scottish companies with the potential to grow.”
Rapid Mobile’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Richard M. Marshall, thanked Pentech and Scottish Enterprise for their continued support. “It is a welcome validation of our software technology and marketing strategy, both of which began when the company was founded in 2004”, he said. “Having a world-class entrepreneur like Mike Ramsay on the Board is invaluable. His experience as co-founder and CEO at TiVo will be a great help as we address the complex, global mobile market.”
About Rapid Mobile Media Ltd
Rapid Mobile Media are an Edinburgh-based software company licensing platforms that enable automatic optimisation, delivery and installation of applications and content on any mobile phone, without the need for user intervention or device-side agents. Their Active Provisioning platform and ThinkPhone design environment allow the rapid deployment of any type of service to the mobile environment, and have to date automatically provisioned more than 3,000 phone types. The Ad360 platform provides complete management of mobile advertising campaigns, allowing graphical and textual adverts to automatically be delivered to the selected WAP, SMS, MMS or application channels at the highest possible quality. For more information please visit http://www.rapid-mobile.com
About New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is a leading venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs create and build major new enterprises that use technology to improve the way we live, work and play. Since its founding in 1978, the firm has adhered to the same core principles: supporting its entrepreneurs, providing an excellent return to its limited partners, and operating in accordance with the highest standards of integrity and respect. NEA focuses on investments at all stages of a company’s development, from seed stage through IPO. With approximately $8.5 billion in committed capital, NEA’s experienced management team has invested in more than 550 companies, of which more than 160 have gone public and more than 230 have been acquired. NEA has U.S-based offices in Baltimore, Maryland; Chevy Chase, Maryland; and Menlo Park, California. In addition, New Enterprise Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd. has an office in Bangalore, India and New Enterprise Associates (Beijing) Ltd. has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, China. For additional information, visit http://www.nea.com.
About Alliance Trust Equity Partners (ATEP)
Alliance Trust Equity Partners Limited is the private equity arm of Alliance Trust PLC, a FTSE-100 company heading an international investment and financial services group that has offices in Dundee, Edinburgh, London and Hong Kong. Through its financial services subsidiaries Alliance Trust offers asset management for other companies and clients and investment accounts, share-dealing and self-invested personal pensions. ATEP manages third party funds and invests on behalf of Alliance Trust PLC. http://www.atep.co.uk
About Pentech Ventures
Pentech Ventures is modelled on "Silicon Valley" venture capital organisations, and takes an active role in working with entrepreneurs to build highly successful technology companies. The executives have a mix of technology, business, and corporate finance experience and are supported by Venture Partners, each of whom have all founded, developed, and sold technology businesses. All at Pentech have a thorough understanding of what it takes to build successful organisations. Pentech invest in best-of-breed teams and ideas and aims to work with entrepreneurial teams that want their venture partner to take an active, critical and wealth-building role in developing their business. Their investment focus is on software infrastructure and applications, for internet content creation and management, communications, and for the new range of internet access devices. Pentech is a division of Penta Capital Partners, an independent private equity house formed in September 1999. For more information on Penta, please visit www.pentacapital.com. Pentech is a division of Penta Capital Partners Limited, Regulated by the FSA.
About Scottish Venture Fund
The Scottish Venture Fund provides investments of up to £2m per transaction in partnership with the private sector on at least a matched funding basis in syndicated transactions, typically, between £2m and £10m. Further information on Scottish Enterprise investments is available at www.scottish-enterprise.com/equity. Scottish Enterprise is the main economic development agency for Scotland covering 93% of the population from Grampian to the Borders and through its Network works in partnership with the private and public sectors to build more and better businesses, to develop the skills and knowledge of Scottish people, and to encourage innovation to make Scottish business internationally competitive. For information please visit http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/
Contact:
AxiCom for Rapid Mobile
James Wood, +44 20 8392 4063
james.wood@axicom.com
or
Rapid Mobile
Tel: +44 131 243 2502
press@rapid-mobile.com
Source: Rapid Mobile Media Ltd
Posted at 12:39 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
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.
View - site
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 | 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.
View - site
Posted at 04:47 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 28, 2007
Spotzer Takes on New Money On a Mission
Spotzer Media Group, the low-budget TV and video ad enabler, has acquired two more investors for a €10M financing round. It is not clear if this is a top up to the C round, announced earlier this year or something else. The new backers sound like a good match for the startup's business plan. It raised capital from Sierra Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif. to help it enter the US market, and European Directories, yellow page publisher active in nine countries, which will offer Spotzer's ads (in a pilot program) to local businesses through its European sales team.
newsobserver.com | Spotzer Media Raises Euro 10 Million From Sierra Ventures and European Directories
View - Earlier a:c euro coverage of Spotzer
Posted at 09:06 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 02, 2007
Germany's Proximic Launches Widget Contextual Ad Network
Founded in 2001 and backed by Munich-based Wellington Partners and Holtzbrinck Group, Germany's Proximic officially launched today. It also announced two large publishing partners London-based The Independent newspaper and Nature Publishing Group.
Proximic mixes contextual advertising and contextual content surfacing. It uses widgets to present results so that readers can find more-like-this content plus relevant ads.
Proximic got a better reception in the American media than we have seen in some time for a European startup, with coverage in The Red Herring, BusinessWeek, CNET and elsewhere. A big part of its PR success is that it boldly says it is taking on Google while hinting at technology that it touts as a new paradigm. We appreciate the way CNET interprets the mumbo jumbo: "Rather than requiring advertisers to buy ads based on keywords or categories, the system automatically reads and matches relevant content according to "interconnected patterns" in the documents that "are not even based on words," whatever that means."
In our view, the technology might be impressive, but we are not big fans of the invasive widget interface and think it will turn off a lot of readers and their favorite publishers.
View - site
Posted at 06:24 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 25, 2007
Cologne's Vendi Bought By US Ad Unit Maker EyeWonder
Atlanta, GA-based EyeWonder has bought Cologne, Germany-based digital interactive advertising firm and online-streaming-spot seller Vendi Interactive for an undisclosed sum. Vendi Interactive will change its name to EyeWonder and will provide expanded rich media and other interactive digital offerings in Germany, which will serve as a base for expansion in Europe.
Read - TechJournal South
Posted at 11:55 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 30, 2007
Lagardère Shops For Two Online Ad Agencies
France's Lagardère has bought two French online ad firms this week: it bought ID Regie and Nextedia. Lagardère paid $67.97M for Nextedia. Nextedia made a gross profit of 9.7M Euros and EBITDA of 1.7M Euros. Lagardère had also bought the US-based and auto focussed online ad network Jumpstart.
Read - announcement
Posted at 05:13 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 24, 2007
Danish Attention-Metrics Startup Raises $2.7M And Plans For $10M Round
Copenhagen-based software startup iMotions Emotion Technology A/S, has attracted a couple of more business angels to a $2.7M round that also brought back most of its earlier backers, 95 percent to be exact. [via Tornado Insider].
The startup develops the software that lets users do something useful with data from an eye-tracking system - in this case they apply it to market research for advertisers and brands that want to test where a viewer's eyes go when looking at an ad or image as well as their 'emotional' response to it (we're not sure how that bit is measured).
It has raised a total of $3.7M and is growing its sales organization. It plans to raise a $10M to $15Mround in a year's time, it said in a statement.
i-Motions uses eye-tracking hardware from Swedish startup Tobii, which is another startup we follow.
The new investors are Mads Kjaer of Kjaer Group, and Casper Foghsgaard, an executive at a Danish biotech enzyme company Novozymes.
Early investors are InVenture Capital A/S, Kenneth Morse, of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center; marketing and PR man Andy Miller, of Miller Consulting Group; and Jørgen Thorball, a VP of bizdev at Novozymes A/S.
View - i-motions
(Read: our coverage of the first i-motions round ).
Posted at 09:38 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 22, 2007
Actionality Bought By Yahoo (Updated)
Updated: Yahoo confirmed to ClickZ today the acquisition of German mobile marketing company that was backed by Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. We called to confirm the deal with its venture capital backer in the meantime who declined to comment but sent us the quote on the acquisition that was issued by Yahoo. (This post also corrects the typo in Actionality's name that appeared in the initial alarm:clock euro post).
Both confirmations were in response to a report in Mobile Entertaintment Biz about the transaction. There is no official word on when it took place or the size of the transaction, yet.
Founded in September 2002, Actionality sells consumer brands and global advertising networks targeted, interstitial mobile marketing campaigns, specifically inserting ads into games, across Asia and Europe. The startup claims access to the game catalogs of numerous mobile operators. Actionality was founded by CEO Scott Cullinane who was with Earlybird Venture Capital for 5 years.
Read - Mobile Entertainment News
View - site
Posted at 06:30 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Cognimatics: From Face Warp To Face Counting
What’s a startup team to do when it realizes that getting its software into smartphones, despite the giddy predictions of market research firms and investment banks, is not the fast track to growth?
The answer, stay lean, don't raise VC, and try another market – at least that’s what Swedish startup Cognimatics is doing.
The four year old company was founded by the same team that founded Decuma, a handwriting recognition for PDAs startup, founded in 1999 that raised VC (probably from too many investors leading to unaligned interests, we can guess) and was sold off to Canadian company Zi in 2004 in an assets sale.
The founders learned a few things from that experience and run Cognimatics as a self-financing venture. A couple still work as professors at a Swedish university.
They first targeted cameraphones as a way to commercialize their cognitive vision tech, which is a geeky term for software that can do useful things with images captured by a camera's image sensors.
Its product, Face Warp, has a design-in win with a mobilephone manufacture and that business generates most of the sales. Its installed base is 50M terminals, Håkan Morän, told us in a phone interview, and the plan is to continue to grow that part of the business.
Face Warp Your Cameraphone Pics (image source: Cognimatics)
Moran is the sales and marketing chief, and joined the founders a year or so ago. In the interview there was no disclosure of the name of the phone manufacture, but your a:c reporter did a little research and learned that SonyEricsson sells its phones with face warp software pre-installed - we assume it's Cognimatics'.
Without the outside money, the startup is very customer-focussed and realized a couple years ago there's demand in retail, selling its patented tech to surveillance camera and display manufacturers for use by retailers that want to know where to position products, and how many people entered the shop or where they went, that is, people and face-counter applications.
This is the market opportunity it is now addressing. It already has signed up customers to apply the tech in electronic surveillance camera and into digital displays. But the company still has no plans to raise outside capital, despite offers, according to Moran.
"Self-financed and organic growth is the strategy for the time being," he said.
A Face Counting package from Cognimatics
Now a retailer can know how many people look at an advertisement for an instore special, for example, and match it with sales. By moving the display around, they can get some numbers to better decide the right location for an ad or what type of ad gets people buying.
We think it is onto a good thing with this retail application. We recall that last year Experian bought VC-backed FootFall for £35Mpre-empting a planned IPO. It was into electronic customer monitoring, which is tracking shoppers. The fact that the company was about to float and that Experian bought it beforehand, suggests that there is some growth ahead for businesses developing this kind of product.
Your a:c euro reporter has seen a lot of startup teams underperform with this kind of computer vision technology over the years, especially research lab spinoffs. But Cognimatics has avoided the security camera market boondoggle, entered the mobilephone one, and is now positioning its technology in another promising one.
Read – Axis camera announcement
View Cognimatics
Posted at 04:57 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 03, 2007
Rotterdams' Adjustables Makes Splash At Ad:Tech
The Netherlands' Adjustables impressed folks at this week's Ad:Tech event in Chicago. The startup has developed a tool to create advertisement for online video. It has many competitors but Adjustable's ads are clickable allowing viewers to interact with the video. We recommend that you view the video to get a good understanding of the 4 ad options that it offers.
Adjustables has raised Euros 900K in VC funding last May from Prime Technology Ventures, which enabled them to open an office in San Francisco.
Adjustables' Windows-based software gives your 4 options for in-stream advertising
View - site
Read - Read/Write Review
Posted at 06:27 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 27, 2007
Tradedoubler Pays £56M For Search Marketing's IMW
UK-based affiliate network TradeDoubler has bought Stockholm-based Internet Marketing Works (IMW Group), which operates search marketing firms for $115M in cash.The multiple doesn't seem vast as IMW says it earned £7.8M in profit on a turnover of £69M.
IMW is perhaps best known for its keyword buy product Bidbuddy.
Read - announcement
Posted at 12:44 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 06, 2007
LiveRail Raises Insider Round For Video Ad Network
Our sister site ad:bree is reporting that London-based LiveRailhas launched a new video ad network with a twist. LiveRail ads are optional, and advertisers only pay when someone actually chooses to watch their advert.
"Whenever someone watches a publisher’s video, we serve up a series of highly targeted, relevant ad-previews underneath their main content. If at any point a viewer sees an ad the interests them, they can click it, watch the video and return to their main content when finished. This means advertisers only pay when somebody actually chooses to watch their ad, giving more measurable, more effective and more controllable results."
LiveRail is led by Mark Trefgarne as CEO who is also Managing Director of London-based internet strategy consultancy firm Cleartide. Seed funding was provided by private investors including Cleartide.
View - sitehttp://www.liverail.com
Posted at 11:02 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 02, 2007
London's Adjug Raises $2M
When we met with Balderton's Klaus Hommels in Silicon Valley recently he talked about Wonderloop but also have Adjug and he put us in touch with Adjug's founders so we had a strong sense that something was underway.
Adjug's founders were putting together a European based alternative to Adbrite. They are Satish Jayakumar (part of Espotting's Founding Management )and Michael Stephanblome (GM of urbia.co.uk and Managing Director of Gumtree).
They have now launched and have announced that they have raised $2M from Balderton as well as from the founder of eSpottings Seb Bishop.
Adjug most closely resembles Adbrite due to its:
1) Transparency. Buyers and sellers know what each other is paying.
2) Flexability. Multiple channel and ad unit buying. Ability for publishers to pass on ad buys and set their own terms.
3) Long tail. For ad buyers, they can research long tail publishes and potentially do small buys on niche sites that they might not have otherwise easily discovered.
Adjug's inventory is currently very limited
We think that Adjug will have a nice run. Adbrite has proven that advertisers and publishers like marketplace concept, but Adbrite is really a US business, particularly for ad buying. Adjug and Balderton should be able to blow out in Europe before Adbrite can expand.
View - site
Posted at 09:33 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 13, 2007
Index/Mangrove Invest In London's OpenAds
Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners, and several angel investors have invested $5M in a first round into London-based OpenAds (fka phpAdsNew). The business was founded originally as a technology division within Unanimis, a digital advertising business in the UK.
OpenAds says it is used by 20K publishers in 140 countries and in 20 languages. OpenAds lists Federated Media, Stardoll, and Sun as users.
OpenAds competes with AdServers from the likes of DoubleClick (Google), and aQuantive (Microsoft). Key differences to date have been that OpenAds is free whereas the others charge, usually very low CPM rates. OpenAds has done well but perhaps the underlying reason that it has not been stronger is that the commercial ad servers cost so little to operate and publishers expect them to provide additional services that they wouldn't expect from an open source product. Moreover, with the multichannels of online advertising (web, email, rss, mobile, video, in-game ads, etc.) large publishers turn to large ad networks.
OpenAds will remain free but will ramp up its consulting practice. We expect they will also enter into some of the other ad channels that we mention above.
Read - Blog announcement
Read - Buzzmachine post
Posted at 02:33 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 03, 2007
France's Emailing Solution Bought Out By Experian's CheetahMail
Experian through its Cheetah Mail subsidiary, has acquired Emailing Solution, a French permission-based email marketing company. Founded in 2001, Emailing Solution claims over 300 clients from diverse industries, including Orange, Staples and Hewlett Packard.
According to Forrester Research, the French market is one of the largest and fastest growing email markets in Europe.
View - site
Posted at 07:26 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Paris' Mobile Ad Startup ScreenTonic Bought By Microsoft
Microsoft is steadily assembling the various slices of the full advertising spectrum. Last year it acquired Massive, with its expertise in in-game advertising and today it bought mobile advertising focused ScreenTonic.
It does seem that Microsoft wants to be more disciplined about the amount and or multiple it will pay for its acquisitions. (Read MSFT blogger Don Dodge who will let you know that Microsoft takes pride in buying companies early while they can still be had at a relative bargain.) Last year Microsoft was reported to have had talks with US mobile ad firm Third Screen Media, but did not close a deal. Likewise, Seattle-based Medio would make sense if not for the price that it might demand.
ScreenTonic is based in Paris, France. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Founded in 2001, ScreenTonic had raised raised €5.5M last April from 3i and I-Source Gestion.
ScreenTonic’s mobile ad solutions are targeted at mobile network operators and publishers. It runs mobile portals with ads such as sponsored links, banners and video ads on their mobile website. So far it has been quite successful in the French market. Last January it boasted it had hit the 1B pages served marker.
After its April funding, ScreenTonic expanded its relationships to operators in Belgium and the UK, and now we expect to see Microsoft take the technology stateside and to Asia. Additionally, it will be interesting to see how quickly Microsoft will be able to integrate ScreenTonic with its Adcenter Web advertising business.
Screentonic Serves Fixed Banners
Video Banners
Interstitials and several other ad formats
View - site
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March 22, 2007
Spotzer Goes From Series B To C In A Month
We did a double take on news that Spotzer had raised a round of funding as we had just reported on the company's Series B closing a month ago. Sure enough, Netherlands-based Spotzer says it has closed Series C led by Cyrte Investments. The amount of which was not released. Spotzer competes with US-based Spotrunner. Its pitch is that companies can purchase affordable and highly targeted advertising-time on TV, websites and mobile devices. Spotzer was started by Andrew Klein, who previously founded an investment bank Wit Capital in 1996.
View - site
Read - Press release
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March 05, 2007
Geneva-based Contextual Ad Network Ads-Click Raises $4M From Baytech
Geneva, Switzerland-based Ads-Click has raised $4M from German BayTech Venture Capital. ADS-Click competes with the likes of Quigo in the private label contextual ad business, but Ads-Click has focussed its attention on Europe and Asia whereas Quigo is big in the US market. The startup says it serves over 3B pages views per month and in 2007 it aims to increase to 10B page views. The company recently launched contextual voice search as well.
Ads-Click was founded in 2004 but development began in 2002. Its founder and CEO is Pascal Rossini who founded Netvertis, which was acquired by Micropole CrossSystem in 2002.
View - site
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March 02, 2007
London's TangoZebra Rich Media Advertising Firm Bought For $30M By DoubleClick
DoubleClick has bought UK-based online ad technology provider Tangozebra for about $30M. Tangozebra specializes in rich media advertising. It was founded in 1996 and was bought 2 years ago by Media Square, a marketing holding company which trades on London's AIM.
Read - DOUBLECLICK ACQUIRES TANGOZEBRA (Release)
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February 01, 2007
German Bluetooth Marketing Startup Going For Growth
Three year old Blue Cell Networks GmbH, a German startup that provides Bluetooth hotspot services, has raised an undisclosed amount of capital from state-backed funds to develop its business, according to Venture Capital Magazin.
The startup has put together a platform it calls Beamzone that is used by crossmedia and mobile marketing agencies for promotions by big brands. It has a long list of brand names that have exploited it, such as McDonalds, Burger King, Opel, Nike and THQ Wireless.
And judging from the number of translations of its website (Portugese, French, German, English), it is going for international expansion.
Beamzone enables agencies to offer free video clips, ringtones, podcasts, games, and coupons to handsets in the radius of its bluetooth network.
With mobile marketing getting so hot in Europe, we like the idea that Blue Cell has its own technology and it sounds like a cost-efficient solution. It seems to have some barriers to entry around out, compared to other mobile marketing players.
As many of you already know, there is a bit of rush on right now over here for mobile marketing agencies to raise capital (eg. YOC, Cellfish, TagAttitude etc.) The agency model is a good business, no doubt, but we don't think it has the kind of scaling built-in that would enable a venture-like return. Blue Cell can ride the mobile marketing wave, but it can also get into other areas where a local Bluetooth hotspot could be useful.
Posted at 06:34 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
December 05, 2006
London's Jobserve Takes Over ComputerJobs
The UK's JobServe.com, an Internet recruitment site, has bought ComputerJobs.com, which claims to be the second largestIT- focused job site in the US after Dice. In May 2006 JobServe purchased USA job boards CareerBoard.com and ComputerWork.com.
Read press release
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December 01, 2006
Mediatech Reporters Get A Buzz
The Guardian sent reporter Jemima Kiss to Library House's Mediatech event where she was chilled by the ac in the Imax theatre, but Equity Kicker says the event was "buzzy", anyway.
Kiss published her notes on the corporate panel online. We were hoping to hear about hints of big Kelkoo-like acquisitions but no "shopping list" alas, Yahoo and co are looking for partners - to extend their own brands or businesses, which is good news for entrepreneurs, neutral news for VCs.
She also wrote that Yahoo's Jonathan Wolf said that the question of whether or not to invest in a "company with a big audience but no proven revenue model is out of date by three or four years". Yahoo has been saying this at VC events for years now - the difference is that apparently a couple of VCs, Index Ventures, for example, are now providing the echo chamber.
Mmm. Three or four years ago - the advertising bubble that accompanied the dotcom bubble had burst. Startups weren't spending their VC money on buying online ads and the sites that had relied on artificially-inflated-ad spending-by-VC-backed-startups had to find a business model that generated serious money. Now that advertising spending is up again - revenue models are not required, seems to be the message. Folks seem to be convinced that we're not in another online ad spending bubble.
Here are some more links to coverge of the event. Particularly of interest is edublog author Ewan McIntosh's posts on almost every presenter at the event on edu.blogs.com, and his photos are very good too.
Read - Investors are looking for audiences, not revenues (Guardian Unlimited blogs)
Read Library House Mediatech 2006 (The Equity Kicker)
Read - Don't Miss Your Calling Mobile Web is here (edu.blogs.com)
Read - Mark Charkin Bebo (edu.blogs.com)
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November 28, 2006
FAST Acquires Platefood's Contextual Search Biz For €8.1M
Norway's FAST Search & Transfer has bought out its strategic co-investors in Platefood, a British contextual search advertising software and related service provider that offers content and directories publishers an alternative to search advertising solutions from the Internet giants.
Platefood was originally set up as a joint investment in 2005 by Schibsted SØK AS, Sensis Pty and FAST. FAST acquired Schibsted's 20 percent and Sensis's 61 percent for € 8.1M in cash. FAST owned 19 percent prior to this transaction. The deal closed November 27, 2006, and FAST expects that all Platefood employees will be kept on.
Platefood Might Be Good With Search Ad Tech But Its Flash Website Is Retina Wrecking
Read - FAST Acquires Platefood (press rel.)
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November 20, 2006
Nugg.ad Funded
Nugg.ad, a German online ads tech startup has raised an undisclosed amount of cash by selling bmp AG (a publicly traded VC vehicle) 17.5% of its equity. The six month old Berlin-based company shows it knows the that most online ad campaigns are a waste of money:
More than 99% of the advertising found on the internet is not clicked on, and nearly as much of it is quickly forgotten. What a waste of screen space, mind space and advertising money!We'll be trying to dig a bit deeper into Nugg to find out about its technologies -it website says it combines a few things, such as cookie tracking and measurement, user surveys, and ad server software it has developed. A quick read on its blog suggests it has an edge on the cookie thing - people delete them, dontcha know - as one of its shareholders is Spring Gmbh, which is an 11 year old software firm specialized in web analytics and measurement, ie. cookies - among other things. It originally spun out of the German Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Read - bmp beteiligt sich in Nugg.ad (boerse.de)
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June 26, 2006
Zanox Acquires eProfessional
Berlin-based Zanox, an enabler of affiliate marketing for ecommerce firms has acquired Hamburg-based eProfessional for its search engine optimization technologies for about €20M.
The founders of the acquired company, Christian Petersen and Michael Schelandhave, signed on for at least three years post-acquisition.
eProfessional had raised a small amount VC about six years ago from bmp, a German publicly traded venture fund.
This is Zanox's second acquisition in recent months. It is rumored to be mulling an IPO or getting itself acquired for a €200M plus valuation.
Read - Berliner ZANOX.de AG erwirbt Hamburger eprofessional GmbH (gsc research)
Read - Zanox gets a price estimate (alarm:clock euro)
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June 23, 2006
French Search Engine Optimization Startup To Float
Netbooster is expected to float on Alternext (the lightly regulated exchange that belongs to Euronext) this month. If it prices in the middle of its bookbuilding range it will raise €5M. The French search engine optimization provider with sales of €8.5M and a reported 70 percent growth rate in 2005, wants to expand its business internationally.
It expects to grow sales by about 60 percent this year.
Read- IPO et internationalisation au programme de NetBooster (Journal Du Net)
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June 22, 2006
Spotzer, Europe's Answer To SpotRunner For TV Ads
Dutch startup, Spotzer Media Group, launched this week an online service to make creating television ads more accessible to firms with smaller advertising budgets in Europe. It also helps to buy airtime on broadcast networks and regional markets. Additional services include placing video ads on mobilephone networks and public video displays (in airports for example).
Spotzer Applies Web 2.0 To Advertising Videos
The a:c euro asked Spotzer about the competition and barriers to entry and first mover advantage.
On competition
Unless we are totally off-target, we are certain to face many other competitors, from other start-ups to new initiatives developed by groups such as Google. (whose business development head recently said in a press interview that local video advertising was one of the biggest next opportunities) and Yahoo and perhaps even E-Bay (which recently won a contract to create an auction platform through which advertisers could buy and sell airtime.)
On the potential for copycats:
The barriers to entry, on the other hand, are pretty significant. What we are trying to do is not easy. We have to define an entire new genre of commercial that works for multiple advertisers operating in different cultures. The creative is actually very challenging and we are spending a huge amount of time with exceptional people trying to figure out what will work. Then, beyond the ads, there are the challenges of getting the message to local, small advertisers.
Is being one of the pioneer for this type of service provide an advantage?
We think being the first mover helps, since we are going to have opportunities to make partnerships with media companies who are looking for ways to enable local advertisers to purchase their inventory. If our efforts work, then the next guys will have to really out-do us before they get the same opportunities.
The company was founded earlier this year and is funded by private investors and the founders, namely, Thed Lenssen, who is a well-known European commercial director, and John Mezzina, former Young & Rubican creative
director and co-founder of Mezzina/Brown. Lenssen has directed commercials for Heineken, Philips, Volkswagen and many others and is the founder of The D-Films and Snoep Films, both based in Amsterdam.
Read- Industry Veterans to Pioneer New Media Model (press release)
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June 14, 2006
Weborama For France's Alternext
Weborama, a French web traffic and emarketing analytics technology provider, is to list on the Alternext (lightly regulated market of Euronext Paris) to raise €4M by the end of the month. Its offering price implies a valuation of about €20M.
Annual sales in 2005 were €2.6M, up 40 percent from the year before. It reports a 30 percent profit margin. Customers include Meetic, the French dating site, MSN France, and Neuf Telecom. Founded in 1998, Weborama plans to use the capital to grow internationally.
Read - Weborama : introduction sur Alternext (weborama PR)
Read - Webora Bientot (neteco)
Posted at 11:33 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 02, 2006
Float Raises €10M For Mobile Marketer YOC
YOC's share price climbed slightly on its first day of trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Its IPO share price gave it a €33.3M valuation and €10M to invest in international expansion, including opening an office in Poland and plans for small acquisitions.
The largest shareholder in the company is now founder and CEO Dirk Kraus with 25%. He has an 18 month lock up. The company, which develops advertising campaigns and content for mobilephones, employs 53 and had sales of €5.3M in its last annual figures.
Read - Börsendebüt von YOC AG geglückt
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May 29, 2006
Emailvision acquires Belgian eMarketing Startup
France’s emailvision, which is a provider of on demand email marketing solutions, said today it will acquire Belgium-based Barnes & Richardson for €1.5M. This is the French firm's first acquisition since floating on Alternext. The buy adds some new competencies and geographic markets.
Barnes & Richardson is specialized in viral e-mail marketing services and has developed a complementary e-mail marketing technology platform, Deep[blue]eyes.
Read -Emailvision announces acquisition(press release)
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May 11, 2006
ad pepper Rolls Up Affiliate Marketer
ad pepper is paying up to €4.2M to acquire two-year old Webgains, a UK based affiliate marketing company. As we reported earlier, the European online marketing company is on an M&A roll. This is its latest deal.
The acquirer's deal rationale:
This acquisition dramatically enhances our existing product and service set up for our advertisers and website partners. In addition, it adds an attractive new line of business for ad pepper with innovative affiliate offerings not only in the UK but also in our other countries", explained Ulrich Schmidt, CEO of ad pepper media.
Read ad pepper media announces (press release)
Read - ad peppers Bargain Basement Rollup
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May 05, 2006
German eMail Marketer To Float
eCircle, a German email marketing firm, is planning an IPO this year to raise capital for expansion and "selective" acquisitions on the back of achieving a 63 percent growth in sales last year to reach €12.2M and a profit of €2M before tax deductions. Despite its small size, the firm says it will list on the EU-regulated Prime Standard market in Frankfurt. There was no disclosure on the size of the float, nor mandated investment banks.
UPDATE: eCircle is venture-backed. Its investors over the years include Wellington Partners and T-Ventures (the Deutsche Telekom venture arm) and BHF-Bank, as well as private investors.
The company provides direct marketing services such as newsletter send-outs and email (ASP-model), SMS campaigns, permission address lists booking and claims to deliver 300 million emails per quarter for the likes of Standard Life, Vodafone, Thomas Cook, T-Mobile, and MTV.
This startup's business activities, size, and growth rate is very similar to France's Emailvison, which had a successful float in February on the lightly regulated Alternext exchange (part of Euronext). Subsequent to its oversubscribed IPO, about 10 percent of its equity was acquired by Fidelity International.
Read - eCircle AG: Prime Standard angestrebt
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April 23, 2006
London Biz Angel Network Shows Seed Investing Pays
London Business Angels, one of several active angel networks in Europe won recognition last week for achieving 17X money on an investment in contextual ads company, Vibrant Media. It sold the shares to an incoming VC firm.
LBA invested €700K in 2001after the dotcom bubble burst. The pre- money valuation was about €4M. Upon exit the firm was valued at €85M. The angel syndicate included eight LBA investors.
The company [Vibrant Media] is now generating revenues of 1.5m euro + per month and these are rapidly increasing primarily in USA... The company was valued at circa 85m Euro in June 2005 for purposes of a new money investment by a West Coast VC subscribing circa 12m euro of new money. In addition existing investors were given the opportunity of selling part of their shareholding to the VC at the same valuation.Existing investors including the founders were offered the opportunity to dispose of part of their existing shareholding to the VC at a value of circa 85m Euro representing a multiple of 17 times for the angels compared to their original investment less than five years earlier. VC Funding of 9m Euro was set aside for this purpose.
Read - Most Promising Exit (eban report)
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April 13, 2006
Iceland’s Spurl Capitalizes On Social Bookmarking
From time to time, the alarm:clock euro profiles early stage startups that are not yet well-known. Today Spurl gets the treatment.
In lists dominated by US-based ventures, there is a handful of European Web 2.0 contenders that consistently make it into “best of” rankings. One of them is Spurl.
Spurl is worth looking at not only because it developed a well-regarded social bookmarking website, but mainly because it is leveraging its user generated content and using it as a key component of a new search engine product, a product that enables what the firm dubs "action marketing".
For the firm’s 30 year old founder, Hjalmar Gislason (picture here), it is his third venture. The first two, a word games company and a text messaging startup specialized in mobile marketing, did well enough commercially that they were acquired by larger firms.
In 2004, Gislason launched Spurl, a typical Web 2.0 project meant to save and share web-bookmarks online. As it grew in popularity, he founded a company, raised some capital from Icelandic business angels, hired staff and then developed software for a search engine that supports Icelandic language search strings.
It exploits the knowledge gathered from the Spurl user base, and combines a logical layer from Spurl with an open source search software module.
The result is more relevant search results for Internet users searching in the Icelandic and Danish languages.
We asked the founder if it was difficult to find business angels for a software startup in Iceland? "Not really. With a promising case in hand, there are business angels here that are willing to join in," said Gislason.
The population is only about 300,000 but Iceland has one of the highest GDPs in the world. “There’s a lot of money flowing here. There are a lot of banks. It used to be all about fish here, but now it’s banks,” he added.
Right now Spurl runs an Icelandic travel search engine Embla.is, in partnership with a popular portal in Iceland mbl.is (which has about 210,000 unique visitors per week).
It has a revenue sharing agreement with mbl, splitting sales generated via sponsored links and action marketing (cost per click and cost per sale).
“We were able to get the business because we handle Icelandic search strings well. The major search engines support English, but don’t do very well for languages that have a lot of inflections or word cases,” explained Gislason.
The plan is to complete further deals along the lines of the Embla win, one is pending is with a Danish portal, as well as online publishers.
Spurl has achieved quite a bit in two years and with a very small amount of capital. One of the ways it did that was to incorporate dictionaries developed by Icelandic and Danish universities. Open source software and user generated content also helped.
Gislason believes there is an even bigger market opportunity than running specialized search services for portals. "Anyone with website that wants to add a search feature could do so with our technology. They can add a search form that blends into the site that serves up sponsored links or affiliate links. We don't put our logo on it and we keep the visitor on-site rather serving than taking them to a separate search portal."
This is a product that Spurl is currently testing with a leading affiliate marketing company, using its search technology and the affiliate market firm’s ads network.
With a plan to grow Spurl’s business internationally, Gislason will look to VC finance to fund it. “We will probably start to raise a first round of venture capital in late summer. We will aim for €3M to €5M.”
We think it is not unreasonable for Spurl to believe it can grow into a good-sized technology venture, even with Google dominating the market. Its approach to delivering software for underserved non-English markets and a strength in content supporting local search, just might give it an edge.
Besides, there are at least two European firms that have built good-sized search software businesses that have weathered the boom and bust. In Norway, Fast Search & Transfer does about $100M a year in sales (double digit growth rate) and is strong in the database and enterprise markets. UK-based Autonomy recently acquired US-based Verity, to create a company that will have about $200M in annual sales.
Posted at 04:30 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 10, 2006
2WayTraffic Float On AIM Buoyant
On Friday 2WayTraffic, a Dutch developer of Interactive TV applications floated on the AIM junior exchange in London, raising £24M to do some acquisitions.
The IPO share price gave it an implied valuation of £106M. Its share price climbed slightly in its first days and is currently trading at a share price that give it a market cap of £112.98M.
Not bad for a two year old company that enables TV viewers to vote on contests, answer quizzes, or find a date using the text messaging (SMS) service on their mobilephone and has to share revenues with the mobile operators as well as the TV broadcasters.
There are several companies in Europe active in this emerging segment. One of them is RedLynx in Finland, which is backed by 3i.
2WayTraffic has a couple of famous founders, which might explain its hefty valuation. Both were part of the team that commissioned and developed the commercially successful reality TV show, Big Brother.