Google’s AdWords may be one of the most successful products in Internet history, but it’s fair to say that most small and medium-sized business owners aren’t exactly experts when it comes to writing their ad copy or picking out keywords — in fact, there’s a whole industry of consultants and firms who specialize in doing just that. Enter Trada, a startup that launched in March that’s looking to help turn the industry on its head with the power of crowdsourcing. The company just closed a $5.75 million Series C round of funding led by Google Ventures, with participation from previous investor Foundry Group. Google Ventures Partner Rich Miner will be joining the board. And yes, this means Google’s VC arm is taking a dip into paid search marketing, which is sure to raise a few eyebrows.
The basic premise of Trada is to make running an online ad campaign as easy as possible: specify a budget you’re willing to spend on ads, decide which advertising platforms you want your ads to appear on (the site currently supports Bing, Yahoo, and Google), and enter how much you’re willing to pay-per-click or per acquisition. Finish those steps and you’re done — the site sources the heavy lifting, like choosing thousands of keywords to target and writing ad copy, to its community of experts. → Read More
Stealth startup Trada launched to the public today as an online marketplace allowing small and medium businesses and agencies to essentially crowdsource search engine marketing services. The startup has raised $2.2 million from the Foundry Group and angel investors Alan Warms, Carlos Cashman, Dan Murray, James Crouthamel, Stuart Larkins and Robert Wolfe.
As we all know, search advertising is necessary for businesses but SEM can be a time consuming, perplexing and tedious task. Many businesses overpay for common keywords or don’t use the right keywords to drive traffic. Trada comes into play here by crowdsourcing SEM experts to build and manage and advertiser or business’ paid search campaign across search engines. The service currently supports Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. → Read More