Lord knows niche and independent online publishers can sometime struggle to monetize what they do and over the last few years we’ve seen the rise of startups to address those problems in the market, from companies like SAY Media to Federated Media. In general they offer baked-in ad networks and publisher platforms. A new one has been plugging away since last year, but its traction has attracted the attention of investors. To whit, RollUp Media has announced it’s secured $1.4 million (€1.2 million) in funding from VC firm Arts Alliance and other investors, bringing total funding since its founding to €2M. The other investors are Assaf Topaz, Peter Read, Karim Attia, David Rosenblatt and former Googler Anil Hansjee.
The new investment will enable the startup to expand its service for publishers with their bespoke suite of platform, tools and services. The funding announcement follows the news of a partnership with Everyday Health Inc, in June, to launch and operate their flagship properties such as Everyday Health.
The idea is to give individuals and businesses with a blog or news site ad and publishing tools, plus RollUp can also help/support generate content.
RollUp Media was founded by a team drawn from Google, DoubleClick, Brightcove and Lycos and is headed up by Ben Regensburger, CEO.
It now services over 30 publishers spanning the health and lifestyle, family and parenting, style and fashion, and career verticals, in the UK and Australia.
Joshua Green, Investment Director at Arts Alliance says Rollup is “poised to benefit from both the rapid growth in the independent publishing market and in the process of content-driven advertising”.
It’s also nice to see Arts Alliance appear, an investor we haven’t seen much of lately.