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.