3 posts tagged “revenue”
Eurekster has raised $5.5 million in a round of venture capital funding, suprising many since they've recently lost their biggest client, Friendster, to Google. The search engine that has dedicated its services to searching communities and social networks has provided value to many, nonetheless, and has become an easy solution for bloggers and niche communities across the board. When it comes to niche search engines, Eurekster has proven to have staying power.
Their swiki feature has proven rather popular and useful to those wanting to add a customized search tag cloud to their website or blog. In terms of the service they provide to communities, it's unique in that they study user behavior in order to provide better search results. This can be monetized, but not as much as a deal with Google, apparantly.
Eurekster's round of venture capital funding was provided by Technology Venture Partners of Australia and Transcosmos Investments of Japan, as well as additional private investors. If their loss of Friendster as a client has hindered them in any way, particularly in closing a deal with another larger company, I'm sure their latest round of funding will help them to further their development and put them in a better position in the long run.
Friendster's got a new friend
Google and Friendster have partnered up for an advertising deal, which is obviously good for the long-forgotten Friendster. Yahoo previously powered their search, but I'm sure Google is offering more money. Friendster, which lost a lot of clout and face value when rival MySpace suprisingly became the poster child for online social networking nearly two years ago, has still managed to hang on to a decent amount of members, consistently improving their service to include the stuff that poular networks are made of.
In following most of the other steps taken by MySpace, signing an advertising deal with Google is among the most lucrative.
It will be most interesting to see if and how Friendster is affected by the advertising deal with Google. The advertising company is always looking for more businesses to partner with. It's Friendster who must now be wary of why they partner with, as Google can appear pretty selfish at times. MySpace, who's very rewarding deal with Google ads left them with smiling faces, is the cause of anguish now that they're seeking a partnership with eBay's PayPal for the creation of online stores for their users. Google's newer online payment system is a direct rival of PayPal.
Yet this will no doubt increase the value of Friendster. If their still looking to sell, having an exclusive ad deal with Google will definitely improve their sticker price. The Google ads are scheduled to appear on Friendster's pages this spring.
YuMe, an advertising company that deals with the online video market, has officially launched today. The company, which received $7 million in venture funding from Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners and BV Capital, has been working with advertisers in beta for some time.
The service offered by YuMe is particularly important for advertisers that have an obvious concern for their ad campaigns being associated with questionable material by offering "brand safe" content. Their technique of scanning video content and categorizing it accordingly means that YuMe can assure advertisers that their campaign will show within the context it was meant for.
YuMe, an advertising company that deals with the online video market, has officially launched today. The company, which received $7 million in venture funding from Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners and BV Capital, has been working with advertisers in beta for some time.
The service offered by YuMe is particularly important for advertisers that have an obvious concern for their ad campaigns being associated with questionable material by offering "brand safe" content. Their technique of scanning video content and categorizing it accordingly means that YuMe can assure advertisers that their campaign will show within the context it was meant for.
This tool is good for video hosting sites that wish to offer an ad-revenue sharing model. As this system is geared for advertisers to pick where they want their content to show, it leaves little flexibility for the content owners. This doesn't appear to be a system that would enable content owners to pick which ads show alongside their material. YuMe is directed towards lowering advertisers' risk.
YuMe's real time tracking system allows for easy modification of ad campaigns and provides added value for the advertisers, who can see peak times and overall effectiveness of their online ads.
I'm curious to know how they go about searching and categorizing web video content, as it is probably the most difficult thing to search, given its visual (as opposed to textual) context. Does YuMe simply search keywords associated with the video content? If that were the case, it would be rather easy to trick the system.
