14 DAY TRIAL // Kontera, an Israeli startup that provides in-text advertising, has raised $15.5 million in a third round of funding from several venture capital firms. The sum comes from Sequoia Capital, leading the round, joined by Carmel Ventures and Tenaya Capital, all of which had already invested in the company. The latest round raises Konetra's total funding to $32.8 million.
“Kontera has opened up the vast, uncharted territory of the internet – the detailed content of web pages,” Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital said. “Thanks to Kontera’s semantic analysis of the contents and meaning of a web page, users can now find information that previously lay buried and advertisements can be positioned with far greater precision. Kontera has shaped and now leads this new market, which is why we organized a financing to further expand its thriving and profitable business.”
This latest round of funding comes after a strong year in 2008 and continued growth in 2009. According to comScore numbers, the company operates the fifth fastest-growing online advertising network, seeing a 40 percent rise in audience year over year. It saw double-digit revenue growth from quarter to quarter for the past year and boasts over 100 million unique monthly users.
The company provides an in-text advertising technology that it claims has some unique advantages over its competitors. The real-time semantic technology it employs allows it to provide ads that are more likely to predict users' need based on the text they are reading and also finds keywords in the text that are relevant to advertisers. These types of advertisements may not be among the most popular, with some users actually finding them very annoying. They usually show up as double-underlined links that display a text or image when users hover over them. While they may not be a user favorite, these ads are very lucrative and effective for the publishers and advertisers using them.