YieldKit assigns affiliate links to over 20 million product offers on keywords, like product names, advertiser names and general keywords. Not unlike the Skimlinks and VigLink model, it then converts existing product links into affiliate links. That means when a user clicks and generates a sale or lead, YieldKit earns revenue, with the lion’s share going to the publisher. Today it’s announced the closing of a $750,000 Series A round with Tim Schumacher and Lars Hinrichs of European accelerator HackFwd. Online marketing expert Tim Schumacher is founder of Sedo, the domain name marketplace, and Hinrichs founded Xiing.com, “Europe’s LinkedIn” which OPO’d. The funds will be used to strengthen its position in German-speaking markets, and roll out internationally.
Part of the reason for the funding is that YieldKit says it has gained month over month revenue growth of over 50% for the last 6 consecutive months, and traction amongst publishers. “We significantly increased all relevant factors of our model in the last months, with customers earning up to 30ct eCPC and obtained various big German publishers as customers,” says Oliver Krohne, founder and CEO of YieldKit.
Schumacher reckons YieldKit has a lot of potential because users get something out of product links which go directly to the opportunity to buy the product.
YieldKit reckons it has superior technology compared to Viglinks – mainly in the US – and Skimlinks, which is working with publishers globally but mainly in the UK and US.
Last year VigLink raised $5.4 million in Series B funding from Emergence Capital, Google Ventures and First Round Capital.
Skimlinks has raised $7 million in total, latterly a Series B from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments.