In-text ad company Kontera received another infusion of venture capital from its backers to build upon an earlier investment in the company’s ContentLink product.
Keywords turn into links with the Kontera product, ContentLink.
The in-text model makes content the delivery vehicle for ads by scanning for relevant keywords, and making them the active ad links.
Kontera recently announced the receipt of a second round of funding from Carmel Ventures, backed by participation from Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers. Rina Shainski, General Partner of Carmel Ventures, will join Kontera’s board.
This follows the $7 million Kontera closed in July 2006 from Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers, for a total of more that $17 million.
A Kontera spokesperson told murdok the latest round of financing will be used to expand their sales, marketing, and research & development efforts.
Publishers using Kontera’s In-Text can choose to display, text, image, or rich media ads when a visitor does a mouseover of an In-Text ad.
By having their ad units appear within the flow of text, rather than alongside it, Kontera advertisers enjoy a better chance of overcoming the ‘ad blindness’ people may have with conventional ad blocks that they have come to ignore.
Over a typical business connection, we could easily view the demo ads Kontera listed on their site.
Flash and video ads appearing on mouseover began playback immediately.
The smaller size ad block Kontera uses makes it possible to create richer content that loads quickly. That behavior makes it more likely a visitor will view more of the rich media advertising.
Being in the flow of text has drawn some criticism of the format as intrusive. TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington complained of this in his comments to Centernetworks’ Allen Stern:
I have a serious issue with ads being placed within the content of a post. They are (sort of) clearly labeled (if you know what you are looking for), but they are super annoying.
