Semantic ad technology provider Peer39 is announcing the closing of its Series C round to the tune of $10.5M, pushing the total amount of funding raised to over $22M. The round was led by Israeli VC Evergreen Venture Partners and was joined by the company’s existing investors Canaan Partners, Dawntreader Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, and JP Morgan.
Since taking an in-depth look at Peer39 nearly a year ago, the company has shifted its focus from developing its own ad network to leveraging its semantic ad platform to transform publishers’ remnant ad inventory into a premium one. The company claims that 70-80% of publisher impressions are sold today as remnant inventory, and that its technology is perfectly suited to analyze these pages so they can instead be used to serve top-tier advertising inventory.
Take news sites as an example: These will often categorize themselves as “News” in ad server profiles but in reality they publish content that varies in categories—finance, health, travel, etc. Peer39’s SemanticMatch technology analyzes these pages in real time to determine what they’re really about. Amiad Solomon (CEO) tells me that they are able to shift up to 70% of news content into more sellable categories. Peer39 also offers SemanticProtect, a collection of ‘brand-protecting’ algorithms that can identify whether pages possess content that can be classified as objectionable or sensitive to advertisers (i.e. crime, terror, politics).
Integrating with Peer39 requires publishers to add a small piece of JavaScript on their site. On page-load, a request is made to Peer39’s servers, which analyzes the data semantically and assigns the most relevant and profitable advertising channel for the given page. This is where much of the company’s semantic and data mining algorithms come into play. Results are sent back instantly to the publisher and integrated within its ad serving systems allowing the most profitable semantic ad (display or text) to be displayed.
I recently saw their CEO speak at the web3 show in NY. Is semantic targeting the next wave? It very well could be. What I am sure about is that there aren’t any other companies I can think of in the industry that “get” the problems (and solutions) of publisher monetization better than Peer39. It makes sense that they got funded now because they look like they’ve got their value proposition nailed.
wouldn’t be surprised
Can someone explain to me what tens of millions of dollars are spent on with these companies? Granted, this actually looks like a useful technology worth investing in.
Business model + technology advantage + competitive barrier = market leader. If Peer39 can keep up the momentum Evergreen and Canaan will have a winner on their hands.
As a consultant to online publishers, I watch this space pretty closely. When Gordon Crovitz from WSJ became an advisor, I took notice. When the Newsweek deal came out, I looked again. Now lightning strikes again. When smart folks like them are joined by smart investors, that’s real. For all the buzz about it, I haven’t seen a powerful implementation of the of the promise of semantics till now – Peer39 could be it…
Finally something unique. We’ve been reading about so many online publishers going down the tubes. They say the flip side of crisis is opportunity, if publishers are in crisis then Peer39 sure sounds like an opportunity.
WOW, evergreen’s internet portfolio is shaping up to be one of the most interesting portfolios out of Israel. Way to go
OpenX http://www.openx.org is a hugely popular, free ad server designed by web publishers for web publishers. It provides everything you need to manage your online advertising.
I have no affiliation just an FYI
Sure…
Thanks for the link to OpenX, I had no idea they were an Ad company.
Whether sarcastic or not, it’s because they have the dumbest name possible for an Ad software company.
OpenX to me sounds like another open source X windows.
I’ve seen these guys at some conferences. Their ideas seem to be cutting edge and right in line with the best developments of the web. This is money spent in the right place.
10.5 Million…..We also have a system that uses social and semantic analysis to present the members with relevant ads as well as proudcts and content.
We built our system from scratch. We tried to use Open X but found it nearly impossible to configure for our needs.
Well the guys at Peer39 are amazing. Way to go Amiad, James and the rest of the crew.
Roi, nice article.
Way to go guys! Hope to have news like this for http://www.worstpizza.com in the near future!
Yes, because pizza review web site needs 10.5M to operate.
I think you could say that for 99% of the sites getting any type of funding.
does this technology of peer39 works for mobile as well ?
Great article and good luck!
http://www.ContextIn.com has a URL classifier (on their site) which actually classifies website context
There are a few other companies in this realm that seem to be pursuing clear paths to monetization. One is Thomson Reuters’ Open Calais, which is designed to position the Reuters news service in the approaching decentralized media environment. I also like what Metatomix is doing as far as using semantic technology to aid enterprises with data integration.
guys, this is no different than adsense . . . just cause they added “semantic” to their product doesnt mean its that much better. Contextual analysis = semantics in its most generic terms anyways.
Just cause you can match any given page to a deeper taxonomy doesnt mean you can sell that inventory as “premium”. . . higher CTR yes, higher eCPM yes . . but “premium” . .. no quite. . .
that said, someone need to give google a run for its money.
Great job !!
I like it. A lot of buzz around semantics over the years – seems like they came up with a real commercial application for online publishers.
I wonder how long before the BIG guys come out with a similar semnatic technology and try to own the market. Move fast folks.
Congrats to Peer39! Looking forward to seeing the improvement of their product.