RingRevenue Raises $3.5 Million To "Track Calls Like Clicks" For Affiliate Networks

RingRevenue, a pay-per-call platform designed for affiliate networks, has closed a $3.5 million funding round led by GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, and Great Pacific Capital. The company is looking to tap into the huge volume of sales that occur via the telephone, helping affiliate networks and ad agencies track phone calls in much the same way online ad clicks are tracked.

The platform allows affiliate networks to assign both unique local and toll free phone numbers to publishers running a given ad campaign. These unique numbers can then be used by the advertiser to track the performance of their publishers’ campaigns and compensate them accordingly. CEO and founder Jason Spievak acknowledges that there are other companies offering call tracking to advertisers, but says that these weren’t built with the affiliate community in mind. Using most other systems, advertisers are forced to manage the logistics of distributing the numbers to publishers and subsequently compensating them. RingRevenue lets advertisers leave the logistical issues to the affiliate networks, who are well versed in them.

The platform also includes a number of features designed to help advertisers maximze their returns. RingRevenue can filter inbound callers in real time, which allows advertisers to selectively choose which callers they’d like to deal with. The service does this by matching phone numbers against a large database of known callers, using data that the company has acquired in-house, along with a number of third party data vendors.

Despite the fact that RingRevenue launched in stealth only nine months ago, it has managed to sign up four of the top ten affiliate networks, including Commission Junction. Aside from its impressive roster of clients, RingRevenue has experience on its side — many of the teammembers previously helped create CallWave, an online telecommunications company that went public in 2004.