Idealab Spin-off Perfect Market Raises $6 Million From Tribune Company, Others

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Perfect Market, which markets solutions aimed to assist publishers in growing revenue from their online content, has secured $6 million in a Series C funding round led by Tribune Company.

Just to be clear, that’s the media giant that owns newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune alongside a number of television and radio stations and a range of online properties.

Perfect Market says it will use the funds to expand its efforts to market and deploy its solution to publishers of newspapers, magazines and websites.

Existing investors Trinity Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners and Idealab also participated in this round. The company’s initial financing round totaled $15.6 million and was closed in July 2008. I failed to find out when or how big the Series B round was.

Frankly, I’m also having a tough time figuring out what the company offers exactly, but here’s the pitch from their website:

Our proprietary technology solution better fulfills the needs of intent users – people who arrive at their sites through keyword searches seeking specific information – with exactly what they’re looking for in our customers’ online content. Optimized content with relevant ads generates higher click-through rates for advertisers, and dramatically more revenue for publishers and their ad network partners.

Sounds like they’re up against Google and a plethora of other companies in this field.

Tribune Company has apparently been using the solutions developed by Perfect Market, which was incubated by Idealab, on several of its web properties in 2009. Clearly, the media company appears to believe in the startup’s potential to compete in a crowded market: aside from the investment, Dan Kazan, Tribune’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, has joined the company’s Board of Directors.

Company: Perfect Market
Launch Date: 2007
Funding: $30.6M

Perfect Market, Inc. is the leading provider of digital publishing software solutions for driving traffic, engagement and revenue. Our products and services are utilized by over 200 premium publishers, including LATimes.com, ChicagoTribune.com, WashingtonPost.com and Comcast.net. Perfect Market’s primary product offering is the Digital Publishing Suite, a comprehensive set of tools that address content recirculation, social discovery, search engine optimization, on-site promotions and ad optimization. These tools enable digital publishers to dynamically adapt the experience for each user in real-time, thereby...

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