Last summer, plista closed a Series B round with Dumont Ventures and Hightech Gründerfonds. Now the company is preparing to raise more capital.
TechCrunch Europe sat down with CEO Dominik Matyka at this week’s Next2010 in Berlin. According to Matyka, who heads up a team of about 30, they have 4 VC term sheets on their desk and the new round is expected to happen within the next 8 weeks. The aim is outperform the last round and raise $5 million.
The new financing round is likely to fund plista’s expansion into the French and Austrian markets within the coming months and their larger plan to expand their reach into continental Europe later this year.
The backbone of their product is a preference based ad network which is similar to Google AdSense but something like Amazon’s recommendation technology thrown into the mix. These recommendation ads are presented through widgets or in-text light boxes on the respective websites. A cookie tracks interests and – like Amazon – finds other similar users who show similar browsing behavior. “This is really why we call ourselves the traffic routing company” says Matyka.
A brand new feature that went live earlier this week is the one-click-ad creator. Simply by typing in a URL the user can create a customized ad in seconds. The system imports tag lines, pictures, and any other ad relevant information. “There is no easier way to create a good ad” says Matyka. The satellite network will go live on June 1st with 5 large key accounts already signed up. Amongst their clients in general are 300 publishers including some of the largest European players, adding dozens of new websites every day to the system, says Matyka.
Just two weeks ago the company launched a private beta of their plista satellite network. The portal is a white-label solution for publishing houses and ad agencies who get their own, personalized plista ad portal.