Klout, a company that measures the influence on Twitter users has raised $1.5 million in Series A from Allen Morgan (Mayfield Fund), Paige Craig, Nova Spivack (Lucid Ventures), Zelkova Ventures, Tom McInerney, Michael Yavonditte (Quigo Technologies), and Ofer Ronan.

Oded Itzhak, founder of Quigo is getting back into the advertising industry by launching a new startup called Doclix.  Doclix is a pay-pay-click advertising network that claims will drive more traffic and ensure better advertising quality/placement.  Doclix will deal wth mostly text ads, but will only deal with publishers that receive more than 1 million monthly unique visitors.

Itzhak has proven himself in the advertising space.  Quigo raised $30 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners, Steamboat Ventures, and IVP.  A couple of years later, he sold the company for $340 million to AOL.  Doclix is working with a few of the same investors that put money into Quigo, including John Frankel.

Doclix’s text ads will have a box appear with more details similar to Kontera’s model.  This tends to annoy visitors of the website.  But Doclix ensures that if someone does see the ad, they intend to have wanted to see it in the first place.  Kontera’s pop up ads simply appear if you put the mouse above the underline ad text.  Doclix will be seeking additional funding in the near future.

[via VentureBeat]

In September 2006, the month that Pulse 2.0 was created, I pointed out that New York-based Quigo was beefing up their client list and that in terms of advertising, the company would be able to compete with Google AdWords.  Quigo Technologies is known for their AdSonar product.  AdSonar provides contextual advertisements based on keywords from any given website, similar to Google AdSense.

Currently, Quigo provides services to ABC News, Hollywood.com, ESPN.com, Forbes.com, FOXNews.com, CareerBuilder.com, and USAToday.com.  In June 2007, Time Inc. decided to choose AdSonar to power the advertising for their websites as well.  Time Inc. is a subsidiary of Time Warner Company.  Time Warner Company owns America Online.  Technically, its a situation where the client wants to become the owner.

America Online is currently putting together a deal to acquire the advertising company for $300 million.  Kara Swisher of AllThingsD broke the news.

Quigo raised a total of $45 million in funding from Steamboat Ventures, Highland Capital, Glenrock Ventures, IVP, and Meritech Capital Partners.  Time Inc. executives predict that Quigo will bring in $100 million in revenues over the next 3 years.