Sunday, July 26, 2009

Kontera Raises $15.5M For Annoying In-Text Advertising Technology

In-text advertising technology provider Kontera has raised $15.5 million from its current investors Sequoia Capital, Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital, the former venture capital arm of Lehman Brothers. This is the second Israeli startup to announce multi-million VC rounds today after 5min informed the public about its $7.5 million Series B round, and once again first reported by business news site Globes.

Kontera provides publishers with real-time semantic analysis
technology that can enhance content and other information to
dynamically link terms that most accurately represent and predict
user-intent and engagement. This is known as in-text advertising,
and you might recognize the double-underlined words on some sites that
make display ads pop up when you hover your mouse over them. Other
market players include Vibrant Media and Infolinks.


Personally, I find this type of contextual advertising annoying from
a reader perspective, and I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on any ads
launched by in-text advertisements, unless it was by accident. But I
keep hearing from publishers and advertisers who have implemented
campaigns using in-text advertising that it’s actually a highly
effective way of pay-per-click promotion, and you wouldn’t be the first
to tell they were skeptical at first but lauding the technology
afterwards.


With the fresh injection, the total amount of capital pumped into the company has now reached $32.8 million. The $10.3 million Series B round now dates back nearly two years.

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