Israeli startup Spot.IM announced on Wednesday the close of a $13 million Series A funding round led by Index Ventures, AltaIR Capital and Norma Investments Limited, representing Roman Abramovich.
Other investors including James Hilton (M&C Saatchi Mobile CEO), Wix founders Avishai Abrahami, Giora Kaplan and Nir Zohar as well as Brian Bedol and Ran Tushia.
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Founded in 2012 by CEO Nadav Shoval, and CTO Ishay Green, Spot.IM turn site comments into social networks. Its product called ‘everywhere social network’. The company’s social engagement embedded on the site to keep people 20% longer and thus generates better ad revenue. Publishers curate their communities’ social interactions directly, encouraging organic site engagement that enables over 3 billion monthly page views while keeping related ad revenue with content creators, rather than having third-party social media platforms cash in and own content they didn’t create.
They call it: “to help digital publishers take back control of content from social media giants.”
Spot.IM currently works with 4, 600 active sites, enabling social engagement for more than 300 million unique monthly visitors for its media partners, which include News Corp., Time Inc.’s The Drive, Little Things Meredith Corporation and Advertising Age.
“Although traditional comments sections are dead due to inefficiencies for moderation, spammers, and quality issues, the format itself is ideal to foster live, immediate social engagement and community building at the source while leveraging the inherent value of quality content for our partners who actually create it, ” Shoval said in a press release.
The investment will be used to further disrupt the online publishing industry and drive growth through new hires as well as expanding R&D efforts to build out capabilities that further foster social interactions within each partner’s social community.
Websites can download the product for free. Advertisers will have the benefit of appearing on different sites, but working out their agreements with Spot.IM rather than the page on which they’ll want to appear. Claiming that this also encompasses 3 billion monthly page views, investors might be eyeing a win.
