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With demand greatly exceeding supply in online advertising, Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers recognize In-Text Advertising as the solution that creates new online advertising real estate, and invest in market leader Kontera.
San Francisco, CA, July 5, 2006 – Kontera, the leading provider of In-Text Advertising Solutions for web publishers and advertisers, announced today that it has secured a total of $7 million in their first round of funding from Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers. Kontera’s flagship product, ContentLink™ is an In-Text ad unit, based on a patent pending real-time contextual analysis technology that finds relevant keywords on a publisher’s web page and automatically turns them into a link to the most relevant ad from among Kontera´s thousands of advertisers. ContentLink™ enables web publishers to monetize untapped and incremental ad revenue, while providing marketers with a better ROI than with other advertising vehicles. For a demo of ContentLink™ click here.
With most online publishers serving banners, rich media and pay-per-click advertising, available real estate for serving additional ads is scarce. Meanwhile, the demand for online advertising inventory is increasing, forcing web publishers to turn away ad revenue and reduce their profit. “After our analysis of the media sector, we became aware of two major industry trends - the inventory scarcity problem in online publishing and the explosive growth of user-generated content,” said Thomas Banahan, Managing Director, Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. “We invested in Kontera because they have a proven service that offers online publishers an actionable and profitable solution to the problem of inventory scarcity. In addition, because Kontera´s content analysis technology works in real-time, it is the monetization solution for the burgeoning user-generated content market."
As the only In-Text Advertising technology which analyzes web content and serves contextually relevant keyword links in real-time, Kontera’s solution is uniquely positioned to generate revenue for publishers vis-a-vis the growing user-generated content market including forums, product reviews, blogs and social networking websites.
“As we’ve all seen, the success of search advertising stems from ‘user intent” - the user is clearly interested in the subject they’ve typed into the search box and you target to that. But beyond the user’s search activities, the best way to figure out the user´s intent is to analyze the content he or she is consuming. Ads can then be served outside of the text, in the form of text ads, banners, rich media or within the text, in the form of a ContentLink™.
The technology behind the ContentLink™ uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze the content in real-time, figure out the intent of the user on that page, and identify and serve immediately the best keyword-to-ad match available from within Kontera´s publisher & advertiser network. And not only is the ad mapped to the user’s immediate frame of mind, but it is also 100% user-initiated. They either mouse-over or not," stated Yoav Shaham, CEO and founder of Kontera. “This round of funding will aid Kontera as we grow and become the de facto In-Text Advertising Solution for online publishers, advertisers and users.”
About Sequoia Capital
Since 1972, Sequoia Capital has provided startup venture capital for very smart people who want to turn ideas into companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs”, Sequoia Capital’s Partners have worked with innovators such as Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Gaurav Garg of Redback Networks, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Dan Warmenhoven of Network Appliance, T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor, Lou Tomasetta of Vitesse Semiconductor, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and Larry Ellison of Oracle. The companies organized by Sequoia Capital now account for about 10% of the value of NASDAQ. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.
About Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers, an innovator in global finance, serves the financial needs of corporations, governments and municipalities, institutional clients, and high-net-worth individuals worldwide. Founded in 1850, Lehman Brothers maintains leadership positions in equity and fixed income sales, trading and research, investment banking, private investment management, asset management and private equity. The firm is headquartered in New York, with regional headquarters in London and Tokyo, and operates in a network of offices around the world. Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, established in 1995, targets mid- to later-stage venture capital investments in companies capable of turning innovative technology solutions into successful businesses. For further information about Lehman Brothers’ services, products, and recruitment opportunities, please visit the firm’s web site at www.lehman.com.
About Kontera
Kontera is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising Solutions, based on patent-pending contextual analysis technology that increases revenue and ROI for Web publishers and advertisers.The company’s flagship product, ContentLink™, is an In-Text ad unit that is linked to a contextually relevant keyword which has been discovered in real time on a web page from within Kontera´s vast network of publishers and then automatically turned into a link to the most relevant ad from among Kontera´s thousands of international advertisers.
ContentLink™ enables web publishers worldwide to monetize untapped content and generate incremental ad revenue beyond current banner or text ads, while providing marketers with a better ROI than with other advertising vehicles because of the contextual relevancy of the ad to the user’s interest. With seven years of experience in In-Text Advertising, Kontera is able to create a valuable experience for users by serving relevant and informational ads that match the user’s interest and frame of mind. The company’s technology facilitates real-time analysis of dynamic web content, enabling publishers to use ContentLink™ to serve ads with any online content type including user-generated content such as blogs, forums, product reviews and social networking sites.
Kontera is a privately held company with offices in San Francisco, New York and Israel. For more about Kontera, visit www.kontera.com.
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