Gasta News, Adconion Media group receives investment of $80m

Gasta News Venture Capital: Good News for European Online Ad advertsiser Adconion

Adconion obtains record venture round in Europe

26 February 2008: Adconion Media Group, Munich, one of the world’sgrowing online advertising networks, has announced a £40.9 million (US$80 million) Series C round of venture funding. The financing is the largest online media venture investment in European history.

The investment was led by Index Ventures, who were joined by existing investor Wellington Partners, and represents the first investment made from Index’s recently announced growth fund. The capital will be used to continue expansion into Europe, US and Asia, strengthening the company’s position as an independent player. In addition, capital will be invested in Adconion’s behavioral targeting technology and also to fund selected acquisitions. Index partners’ Dominique Vidal, former CEO of Yahoo! Europe, and Giuseppe Zocco, the firm’s co-founder, will join Adconion’s board of directors.

“Adconion has the relationships, the expertise and the best in class technology becoming of a future market-leader in technology’s hottest growth sector,” says Dom Vidal of Index Ventures. “Our experience as investors in the advertising space enables us to support Adconion in continuing its rapid expansion throughout Europe and North America and to further build its global presence. As online media becomes more fragmented and as agencies look for more independent partners for solutions, we believe ad networks like Adconion are perfectly positioned to capture more advertising spend.”

“At the risk of sounding clichéd, the modern business landscape is irrefutably global in scale and that is due primarily to the opportunities created by the Internet,” says Adconion founder and CEO Tyler Moebius. “Agencies choose to partner with Adconion because their clients are likely in a position where doing business internationally is either ‘business as usual’ or a strategic opportunity for growth. This substantial investment from Index and Wellington will position Adconion alongside the portals on marketer’s short-lists for global distribution partners.”

“Tyler and his team have done an outstanding job building a truly global online advertising network,” says Frank Boehnke of Wellington Partners. 'We are very excited to continue to work with Tyler and Adconion on one of the most exciting growth stories in the global marketplace.”

Gasta News On Venture Funds Europe

Gasta News On Venture Funds Europe

http://www.tornado-insider.com

Similar to previous years, European venture capital activity has started off with a bang this year. Already over 170 technology investments have been recorded, raising approximately €920 million. And there is more to come, judging by a series of successful fundraisings by Europe’s investors. This past week alone, 4 successful closings of new funds were announced.

German early-stage venture capitalist Target Partners announced the first closing of its new fund, Target Partners Fund II, at €61.5 million. The firm received commitments from private individuals, family offices and institutional investors, including Morgan Stanley, LGT Capital Partners, Bayerische Beamten Lebensversicherung, RWB RenditeWertBeteiligungen and CS Strategic Partners. The new fund has a target size of €120 million. It will mainly invest in start-up and early-stage companies from the German speaking countries, with sectors including IT, communications, Internet, media and clean-tech.

UK venture capital firm TLcom Capital also held a first closing of its second fund, TLcom II. Funding commitments were in excess of €50 million. The target size of the fund is €150 million. The new fund will focus primarily on revenue-stage technology companies across Europe. Returning investors, European Investment Fund and Access Capital Partners, have been joined by Italy-based Finlombarda Gestioni SGR - the investment arm of the development agency of Lombardy - and a group of limited partners associated with IDeA Alternative Investments. IDeA AI is an investment initiative recently launched by private equity group Investitori Associati, Wise and DeAgostini. TLcom II expects to invest in 12 to 15 companies over the next few years. A second closing is planned later in the year as the fund is now also talking to other institutional investors.

Meanwhile, Finnish venture capitalist Inventure completed the first closing of Inventure Fund Ky. The fund focuses on early-stage high-tech investments in the Nordic countries, primarily Finland. Investors investing in Inventure are European Investment Fund and Finnish Industry Investment, in addition to several undisclosed institutions and private investors. The current closing is completed at €35 million and has a final target of €50 million. Inventure aims to invest in 15 high-growth companies with significant value creation and return potential. The firm targets innovation clusters such as software, electronics, semiconductors as well as industrial production and material technologies.

Concluding, 360° Capital Partners announced its final closing with more than €100 million under management. The European Investment Fund, AGF of Allianz Group, Banca Sella Group and Natixis are the main new investors in the venture capital fund. It will invest in European companies, mainly in France and Italy. The new shareholders are joining CDC Enterprises, Credit Suisse – Alpha Associates, Partners Group, Gruppo Banca Intesa San Paolo, Wilshire Associates, Paul Capital and Coller Capital, who had already committed in the first closing which took place last year. 360° Capital Partners invests between €2 and €5 million in first or second rounds of financing of high-growth innovative companies operating in segments including ICT, Web 2.0, diagnostics/medical devices, and clean tech. 5% of the fund is dedicated to seed-stage companies.

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Google Automatic Matching no Match For Gasta SearchMatch

Google Automatic Matching no Match For Gasta SearchMatch,

Gasta SearchMatch is offering real value to advertisers in this poor economic climate.

Michael Estrin of Imedia Connection writes:

On the heels of reports that Google has seen a drop in its paid click business, news has broken that the search giant has quietly unveiled a new program designed to use up unspent search marketing dollars.

According to a New York Post story, Google is testing a new feature called Automatic Matching.

News of the test program first broke on SEO Fast Start when the blog posted an email from Google to one of its AdWords customers.

"Automatic Matching automatically extends your campaign's reach by using surplus budget to serve your ads on relevant search queries that are not already triggered by your keyword lists," the email read. "By analyzing the structure and content of your website and AdWords campaigns, we deliver more impressions and clicks while maintaining your current CTRs and CPCs."

While Silicon Valley Insider points out that some SEO experts like SEO Fast Start are being overly harsh with respect to Google's test program, the timing of the news appears to be the big problem, with some marketers accusing the search giant of grasping for every last cent of their ad budgets at a time when overall business may be slumping.

"Whether Google's intention is to expand the advertisers' untapped opportunities or not, timing is everything and at this time on the surface it appears that Google's only motive is to monetize additional clicks," said Mark Simon, VP of industry relations for Didit, a search-marketing firm. "My suggestion to Google is to communicate the expanded opportunities to search advertisers and let them decide whether they are willing to invest in them at the risk of potentially reducing their ROI metric."

According to Chris Winfield, president of search marketing firm 10e20, ROI, not total budget, is the only real issue.

"I would have no problems spending more money if I'm getting more return on my investment," Winfield told the New York Post. "If I'm just spending more money and it's not high-quality traffic, then that's a problem."

In its email to AdWords customers, Google cited an example for the search term "adidas." According to Google, the new program would match customers with keywords on its traditional list, which includes terms like "shoes" and "athletic," but it also would match with terms like "slippers."

Whether searches for "slippers" will mean anything to those marketing adidas remains to be seen.

A quick Google search for "slippers" yielded no natural results for adidas on the first page. However, the search did return one ad for adidas sandals on sale at Shoes.com.

Gasta Big Snap Campaign News

Microsoft will launch a six-figure competition-based marketing campaign for Live Search next week as it attempts to boost the search engine’s user numbers.

The ‘Big Snap’ campaign is a partnership with Virgin that offers prizes including Virgin Atlantic flights whenever people use Live Search.

Based on the card game Snap, search results will also display cards that, when turned over and matched with another, win a prize.

The campaign’s digital agency, Thin Martian, has also developed bigsnapsearch.com to support the promotion.

Paul Davies, MSN and Windows Live marketing director, said, “Searching is the second-most popular online activity after email and this campaign is designed to enliven people’s everyday search experiences. We wanted to create a compelling mechanic that would motivate and excite users while driving traffic and increasing query volume on Live Search.”

Live Search has 3.5% of the global search share, according to COM Score, behind Yahoo! (13.1%) and Google (66%).

Gasta Blended Search

COOPER on Search New Media NMA Daily Alert 21/02/2008 05:05

... The prevailing wisdom is that brands should produce multimedia content in order to provide compelling user experiences online. But will it soon be the case that they have to do so to remain visible in search results?

Engines, as with Google’s Universal Search and Ask’s 3D, are increasingly displaying multimedia results in their natural listings. Is this putting more pressure on brands to develop extra content like blogs and videos?

This was one of the subjects brought up regularly during conversations at Search Engine Strategies (SES) London this week - what pressures are being put on advertisers and SEO specialists to make sure they remain above the fold?

I’ve always liked the concept of blended search, as its being increasingly termed, but the conversation has moved from understanding what it is to how to make the most out of every bit of content - video, audio, images - a brand has.

There’s now a feeling that blended search is posing tough questions for some brands, a point raised in today’s NMA Podcast.

If you’re promoting a Hollywood blockbuster, naturally you’ll have videos, images and great online content, with a budget the size of a mountain. But is it the same for, say, B&Q?

Is this creating a division between those advertisers that have the resources and those that don’t? Does every advertiser need to have a blog, a video, multiple images, in order to remain visible?

I think once Universal Search results become more common, a lot of brands will suddenly realise SEO just got that little bit harder.