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. → Read More
Kontera, an Israel startup (although their official headquarters is in San Francisco), is cashing in on the full-on bonanza around anything that calls itself an advertising network right now. A year ago they raised $7 million from Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers. Tomorrow they’ll announce a second round of financing – $10.3 million more from Carmel Ventures, an Israeli venture firm. Sequoia and Lehman are also participating. Kontera’s main product is in-text advertising. They’ll take popular keywords within the text of an article and put double lines below them to signify it’s an advertisement. Clicking on it generates cash for the publisher. A demo of the product is here. In the press release a customer claims to be seeing 10% click through rates from the ads. Thanks to Roi Carthy for the tip. → Read More
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