Israeli social engagement platform Spot.IM has closed a $13 million Series A financing round. Investors included Norma Investments Ltd., representing Roman Abramovich, Index Ventures, AltaIR and others 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.
The Tel Aviv startup is a disruptive social engagement platform working with over 25% of the US digital publishing industry. The company was founded in 2012 by CEO Nadav Shoval, and CTO Ishay Green and has raised $18 million to date including the latest financing round.
Spot.IM currently works with 4,600 active sites, enabling social engagement for more than 300 million unique monthly users for its media partners, which include News Corp., Meredith Corporation, Time Inc.'s The Drive, Little Things and Advertising Age. The company partners with publishers to 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.
Shoval said, "We're all about bringing together the online publishing industry, and giving our partners and content creators a social community that they can be proud to cultivate. We've seen the struggle dealing with third parties and that's why we're determined to change the web. That's why Spot.IM was created. We partner with digital publishers to keep their conversations generated from original content within their entity. We're the crusaders leading this movement, committed to providing the most innovative tools and resources needed to successfully leverage the inherent value of quality content for our partners who actually create it."
Spot.IM helps digital publishers realize the full social value of their original content. Partners who use Spot.IM to engage with their audiences have experienced significant increases in direct visits as well as retained visits, which helps strengthen their online communities and allows them to maintain ownership over the data and traffic their content generates. Streamlining the process for both publishers and users, installation of Spot.IM's platform is as simple as placing a few lines of code on pages, while users only need a single login to instantly join a conversation on any Spot.IM partner site.
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.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 3, 2016
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