Lotame is an digital advertisement company that focuses on social networks. Yesterday, Lotame announced a $13 million Series B venture round of funding. The lead investor in Lotame was Emergence Capital and Battery Ventures along with Hill Crest Management joined in.
With this round of funding, Lotame plans on using the funding to enhance products, improve marketing, and further business developments. Lotame’s clients include Flixster, Huffington Post, and Fotolog.
“Lotame has demonstrated leadership and a track record of success in monetizing the biggest opportunity in online media since the advent of search advertising,” stated Jason Green, general partner at Emergence Capital. “Lotame is producing unparalleled results and insight for publishers and advertisers by leveraging a unique targeting platform that translates social media inventory into valuable real estate that brand advertisers love. With dozens of blue chip advertising clients and a growing publisher network reaching tens of millions users today, Lotame is clearly the company to beat in the space. We are looking forward to working with this tremendously talented team and applying our expertise to help build the digital marketing leader in this new category.”
Lotame’s key product is called Crowd Control. Crowd Control allows advertising agencies to build campaigns tailored to an audience that has relevant interests. Lotame is based in Elridge, Maryland and has offices in New York and Boston.
Angie’s List aggregates consumer reviews about companies for hire. Angie’s List members plug in about 15,000 reviews per month. Angie’s List charges users to read reviews. The company estimates $14 million in revenues and is based in Indianapolis, Ind. There are about 200 employees working for Angie’s List. Bill S. Oesterle is the CEO and Angie Hicks is the CMO.
Angie’s List reviews companies on a scale of A to F. Angie’s List receives revenue from membership fees and ads. Angie’s List has over 600,000 members.
Angie’s List has recently raised a round of funding at about $35 million. The funding was provided by Battery ventures. The funding will be used to expand into new markets such as the medical sector.
Users that are skeptical about joining should read the Top 10 reasons why Angie’s List is worth the money.
Craigslist is rumored to have earned $150 million in 2007. That does it, I need to register a domain name with my name in front of the world “list” and sell classifieds or aggregate consumer reviews.
Information Source:
[1] VentureBeat: Angie’s List collects $35M to expand services by MG Siegler
Joanne Bradford, Chief Media Officer of MSN is leaving Microsoft to join Spot Runner. The MSN network receives 465 million unique users per month. Before Chief Media Officer, Bradford was corporate VP of Global Sales and Marketing. She was also the Chief Media Revenue Officer and in 2001, Bradford was VP and Director of BusinessWeek’s advertising sales divison.Â
In the meantime, Greg Nelson, a 12 year team member of Microsoft will lead the MSN team. Nelson was a GM of MSN.com International beforehand. As of a month ago, Bradford reported to Steve Berkowitz. Berkowitz will be leaving later this year as well.
Spot Runner was founded by Nick Group and David Waxman. These two created Firefly Network Inc, a company that Microsoft acquired in 1998. Firefly had the technology that was used as the foundation for Microsoft Passport.Â
Spot Runner is a company to buy 30 second TV ads online. Investors include Battery Ventures, Index Ventures, WPP, Interpublic Group, and CBS.
Today, India-based travel planning website, Travelguru has received $15 million in funding from Battery Ventures and Sequoia Capital India. This second round investment “is the largest investment in one single round in the consumer internet space in India yet.”
“The new round of investments will help us strengthen our reach through delivering retail experience to our consumer base as well as in making continued investments to maintain our high level of customer satisfaction and service,” stated Ashwin Damera, the Founder of Travelguru. “The second round of funding from Battery Ventures and Sequoia Capital reaffirms the growing confidence in Travelguru’s team and leadership position in the Indian travel and tourism industry” added Damera.
Earlier this year, Travelguru had received $10 million from Sequoia Capital India as a first round investment. This is Battery Ventures’ first investment in an Indian Internet company. “We are very happy to announce our first major investment in the consumer internet space in India with Travelguru. Given our experience in technology in general and consumer internet specifically, we selectively look for companies with a few key ingredients: companies that address large markets, have very strong leadership, and have shown they can deliver innovative offerings as well as execute on sales and marketing,” stated Mark Sherman, General Partner of Battery Ventures.
One of Travelguru’s competitors, MakeMyTrip.com is also working on raising a major investment. MakeMyTrip is expecting to receive $10-$12 million shortly.
Travelguru is similar to Travelocity and Expedia in the fact that it searches for discount prices on hotel accomodations, flights, etc. As an experienced user of MakeMyTrip, I was impressed by the ease of booking tickets within India by such websites. Through MakeMyTrip, I was able to find a one-way ticket from Bangalore to Delhi on premium airline, King Fisher for 3,000 rupees and normally the price of flying this airline on the same route is over 8,000 rupees. The current dollar-rupee conversion rate is 1 USD-44.54 INR. At this conversion rate, a total investment of $25 million will drastically improve Travelguru operations.
Today, India-based travel planning website, 
