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.

Personally, I find this type of contextual advertising annoying from a reader perspective, and I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on any ads launched by in-text advertisements, unless it was by accident. But I keep hearing from publishers and advertisers who have implemented campaigns using in-text advertising that it’s actually a highly effective way of pay-per-click promotion, and you wouldn’t be the first to tell they were skeptical at first but lauding the technology afterwards.

With the fresh injection, the total amount of capital pumped into the company has now reached $32.8 million. The $10.3 million Series B round now dates back nearly two years.

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.