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Advertising - Monday, June 1, 2009

MashLogic Raises $500K for Semantic Search Ad-on

Menlo Park-based MashLogic has raised $500K in angel funding. The startup was incubated by Bessemer Venture Partners. Backers include Scott Kurnit, Reid Hoffman, Gil Penchina and Jeff Clavier.

MashLogic is a Semantic web startup that has developed an add-on for IE and Firefox that let's users indicate which search results sources they prefer - be it Twitter, Wikipedia, or LinkedIn.

The company had folded in DashNote which was building a platform for "User-Driven Contextual Advertising." The ideas was to enable consumers to interact directly with web pages and invoke relevant services and resources, ranging from utilitarian (e.g. person lookup, driving directions) to commercial (price comparison, Financial Services). Based on the Context of the web page, DashNote said they could derive consumer intent, which they hoped to be able to package to advertisers.

Partner distribution will be the key here. Most on the Web are not going to know about MashLogic and won't know why they should download it. Partners will need to provide conviction.

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