SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - March 11, 2011) - Automated affiliate marketing leader VigLink (http://www.viglink.com) today announced that it has completed a $5.4 million Series B financing round led by Emergence Capital. Existing investors Google Ventures and First Round Capital participated in the round. Kevin Spain, principal at Emergence Capital, has joined the VigLink board of directors. VigLink's total amount of funding is now $7.3 million.
The financing will be used to accelerate VigLink's hiring in support of product development and expansion into new content verticals and geographies.
VigLink helps web publishers monetize their sites by generating revenue from purchases resulting from outbound traffic. VigLink handles billions of page views a month across many leading online publishers including VerticalScope, Internet Brands, AVSForum.com and more than 15,000 other sites. The company's solution automatically affiliates and tracks existing and optionally inserted hyperlinks. In addition to immediate revenue, VigLink delivers publishers comprehensive data about downstream customer purchase behavior. The product is installed by adding a few lines of code to a page template and otherwise is entirely hands-free.
"Publishers recognize that display advertising has reached a point of diminishing incremental returns," said Oliver Roup, CEO of VigLink. "VigLink offers a revenue channel completely independent of display advertising and this new capital affirms our traction developing this automated and un-intrusive monetization strategy."
"Outbound traffic is rarely monetized effectively by publishers," said Kevin Spain, principal at Emergence Capital. "VigLink broke new ground by automating affiliate marketing and delivering meaningful incremental revenue. This round of funding cements their position as market leaders and will accelerate the pace of the company's already impressive growth."
VigLink also added several industry luminaries to its advisory team, including Jeff Clavier, founder and managing partner of VigLink investor SoftTech VC; Auren Hoffman, CEO of RapLeaf; Kristopher Jones, founder and former CEO of Pepperjam; and Stuart Larkins, a former DoubleClick / Performics executive.
Recently, VigLink hosted ForumCon, a sold-out conference for forums and other communities, and completed the integration of Driving Revenue, Inc., a competitor the company purchased in Aug. 2010. In addition to Google Ventures, First Round Capital and SoftTech VC, previous individual investors include LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, former Google executive and current LinkedIn VP of Product Deep Nishar, Niel Robertson, Hadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, Carlos Cashman, and Micah Adler.
Resources
More on VigLink (@VigLink): http://www.viglink.com
More on Emergence Capital (@emergencecap): http://www.emcap.com
About Emergence Capital Partners
Emergence Capital Partners, based in San Mateo, Calif., is the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage Technology-Enabled Services companies. Its mission is to help build market leaders in partnership with great entrepreneurs. Emergence partners have funded and helped build more than 50 TES companies, more than any other early-stage venture firm. Emergence Capital has assets of over $325 million under management. Investments include companies such as salesforce.com (CRM), SuccessFactors (SFSF), HireRight (HIRE), Box.net, Yammer, Veeva and InsideView. For more information, visit http://www.emcap.com.
About VigLink
VigLink has created an economy of links, allowing Web publishers to supplement site advertising revenue automatically and transparently by leveraging the value of their outbound traffic. Web publishers can embed just a few lines of code on their page template and utilize any of a suite of tools that drive incremental revenue for the publisher and incremental sales to the down-stream merchant. VigLink is backed by Emergence Capital, Google Ventures, First Round Capital, SoftTech VC and individual investors including LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, former Google executive and current LinkedIn VP of Product Deep Nishar, and noted technology entrepreneurs Niel Robertson, Hadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, Carlos Cashman and Micah Adler. For more information, visit http://www.viglink.com.
Contact Information:
Contact:
Rachel Petersen
415-637-0576