The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) 1. AOL buys Quigo for $340M. Yaron Galai and Oded Itzhak (featured on VC Cafe in the past) are probably happy to be part of AOL’s web advertising network. The deal adds …
Continue reading “Quigo Brings Home the Bacon, 5min for $5M, TransChip Makes an Exit, Refresh 07”
Source: Paidcontent.org Globes Online reports that Quigo, the NYC and Israel based online contextual ad technology provider, is preparing for a Nasdaq IPO in early 2008. Quigo has raised $30 million from Institutional Venture Partners, at a company value of $250 million, as part of the preparations for the offering, it says. It closed a …
Continue reading “Quigo, a serious alternative for Google’s Ad-Sense, Preparing for IPO”
In a world that suffers from content overload, personal recommendations are a bare necessity. Israeli startup Outbrain, one of the leading companies in the recommendations space, has completed a $35 million in Series D led by Index Ventures and joined by previous investors Carmel Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. This brings Outbrain’s funding to $64 million total since its inception in 2007.
Yaron Samid’s TechAviv, the most extensive Israeli start up meetup group in Israel and the US, has announced the launch of a new angel network today. TechAviv Angels is an informal group of Israel’s ‘top dogs’ media founders, that grouped together to identify, fund and mentor early stage Israeli start ups. I have to hand it …
Continue reading “Attention Israeli Entrepreneurs: TechAviv Angels Launches”
Outbrain has just announced a $12M Series-B investment led by Carmel Ventures. Outbrain’s previous investors – Gemini Israel Funds, Lightspeed Venture Partners and GlenRock Israel – all participated in the round. In addition, Zohar Gilon and Rhodium have also joined the round. Following the investment, Shlomo Dovrat, co-founder and general partner of Carmel Ventures will …
Continue reading “Content Rating Just Got Better: Carmel Ventures Backs OutBrain”
“Invest in Israel“, Israel’s Investment Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry, Trade & Labor, publishes a monthly newsletter with lots of good news on the Israeli market. You may have seen some of the posts on VC Cafe earlier this month, but this is a good summary, especially for M&A deals off the internet …
Continue reading “Israel Newsletter November 2008: M&A Deals Galore”
While these days everyone is obsessed with online video and video monetization, text remains the most common form of content on the web and still represents the largest advertising opportunity. When it comes to monetization of text, we have experienced a slow evolution: at first there were banners – Yahoo was king. Then, Google introduced …
Continue reading “Can Kontera Lead The In-Text Advertising Play?”
I’m at Ad:Tech in San Francisco today, one of the largest conferences on digital media and advertising. I came here to see the greatest and latest of online advertising and site monetization. I was happy to see that nine Israeli companies are exhibiting in the conference. Below is a quick background on each one, from …
Continue reading “Nine Israeli Companies Exhibiting in Ad:Tech San Francisco 2008”
Outbrain announced the closing of a $5M A-round investment today, led by Gemini Israel Funds and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Outbrain’s seed investor GlenRock Israel, also participated in the round. Outbrain is a content recommendation and rating platform for blogs, news and RSS content. Outbrain’s star ranking widget (as seen on VC Cafe) allows users to …
In an exclusive interview with VC Cafe, Levy Cohen, CEO and Founder of Israel/US based Collarity, provides insights into the company’s value proposition, future plans and lessons learned along the way. Founded in 2005, Collarity has developed a comprehensive content monetization platform for web publishers. What does it mean? Collarity is basically a web service …
