MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA–(Marketwire -01/24/12)- Global precision marketing platform company Adara Media Inc. has secured $12.4 million in funding from venture capital firm August Capital, with participation from existing investors Morgenthaler Ventures, Onset Ventures, and Baseline Ventures. This financing will fuel increased investment in Adara Media’s award winning TruPrecision Targeting Platform, delivering highly targeted media and ecommerce campaigns based upon specific customer relevance across top travel and hospitality brands. It will also advance Adara Media’s mission to expand its platform into new verticals and invest in sales, marketing and operational resources.
The funding follows exponential spending increases from Adara Media’s clients in 2011. Working with complex customer data sets and valuable audience segments, such as frequent flyers, business and international travelers, Adara Media enables top brand advertisers to connect with a highly desired consumer base via online media channels.
“This new round of funding from an esteemed group of partners represents continued investment in the growth of our business,” says Layton Han, chief executive officer of Adara Media. “Our business has achieved revenue growth every month during 2011 and is now poised to grow more aggressively and efficiently. We’re excited to have the support of August Capital, and the continued backing of our existing investors, as we invest heavily in our platform development and continue to expand globally.”
Han added that Adara will also use the funding to take the TruPrecision platform into new vertical categories. The company’s growth in 2011 has come from travel, hospitality and closely related verticals. Through Adara Media’s TruPrecision Targeting Platform, brands can reach and activate more than 225 million traveler profiles.
Dave Marquardt and Tripp Jones of August Capital led the investment in Adara Media. “We pride ourselves on investing in companies that show entrepreneurial excellence and technical innovation,” said August Capital co-founder Dave Marquardt. “Adara Media and its management have shown that this platform can bring brands closer to their best customers through the use of technology. We’re excited about Adara’s future as they expand globally and develop into new verticals.”
Adara Media’s industry leadership has been acknowledged through many industry awards including AlwaysOn OnMedia 100, Red Herring North America, and the Mega Awards, hosted by Airline Information. Adara Media has recently established an office in Chicago and announced the promotion of Scott Garner to EVP of business strategy, now responsible for strategic partnerships as well as new product strategy.
About August Capital:
Founded in 1995, August Capital has funded an extraordinary group of entrepreneurs who have built significant, long-term value across the full range of information technologies. These companies represent an aggregate market capitalization of well over $250 billion, generate in excess of $75 billion in annual revenue around the world. This success is a testament to the entrepreneurs themselves, as well as the fundamental technologies they have created. August Capital has $1.3 billion under management, and has invested in more than 75 companies including Atheros, Cobalt Networks, Iridigm, Mimosa Systems, Postini, Seagate, Shopping.com, SixApart and Silicon Image. Recent investments range from $500,000 to $130 million in information technology businesses from semiconductors to ecommerce. The firm’s partners have previously invested in a number of ground breaking technology companies, including Actel, Adaptec, Compaq, Grand Junction, Intuit, Linear Technology, Microsoft, MMC Networks, Skype, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, Symantec, and Visio. August Capital is located in Menlo Park, California. For more information, please visit: www.augustcap.com.
About Adara Media:Adara Media offers a loyalty audience platform that enables top brands to monetize and nurture their loyalty program customers online and helps advertisers reach exclusive, qualified audiences. Using proprietary loyalty data, Adara Media enables advertisers to reach real individuals, ensuring authenticity while maintaining complete anonymity. Adara Media’s brand partners then gain ancillary revenue streams and the ability to deepen their relationships with loyalty consumers through targeted offers and consistent communication. Adara Media was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.adaramedia.com/.
http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
2012年1月19日星期四
Job Search Engine Adzuna.co.uk Receives £500k Investment Backing from Index Ventures
LONDON, January 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ –
Adzuna, the next-generation job search engine, has today announced it has raised £500k investment financing from Index Ventures, The Accelerator Group and existing investors including Passion Capital. The latest funding follows a seed round last year.
Launched in July 2011, Adzuna classifieds aims to become the world’s leading search engine for classifieds, bringing together all the ads and connecting users with them in new ways.
Adzuna collates almost every job ad in the UK in real time from hundreds of websites, including all of the major job boards as well as sources like the London 2012 Olympics, Williams Formula 1 and the Royal Household. In addition to listing around 500,000 vacancies, the unique Adzuna Connect feature helps users “get hired with a little help from their friends” by connecting them to Adzuna jobs where they have first or second-degree connections on LinkedIn or Facebook.
The site also offers a wealth of data about the jobs and companies recruiting, from average salary data to employee reviews, interview questions and “CEO Approval ratings”.
Since launch in July, Adzuna has rapidly grown to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, and was named a Top 20 Startup of 2011 by Startups.co.uk, a finalist in the Website of the Year awards, and shortlisted for the Europas.
This latest round of funding will be used to drive further product innovation around social and data, and expand into other verticals as well as international markets.
Robin Klein, Venture Partner at Index, said, “We’re delighted to be working with Andrew and Doug, experienced entrepreneurs whom we know well from their track records at Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla. The Adzuna team has achieved a great deal in a short period of time, and we believe the innovations they continue to bring to the market will change the way people search for classified ads.”
Doug Monro, Co-Founder of Adzuna, said: “We’re really excited to have top-class investors like Index, The Accelerator Group and Passion involved. We are passionate about making the classifieds search experience fundamentally better for users in the UK and beyond. This will help us towards that vision.”
About Adzuna
Adzuna.co.uk (http://www.adzuna.co.uk) is a search engine for classified ads which makes it easier for you to find the right job locally – and soon properties and cars too. We search thousands of sites so you don’t have to, bring together millions of ads so you can find them all in one place, and organize them with useful features so that you can easily find what you need.
Adzuna founders Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro met working at Gumtree in 2005. They stayed in the local internet space for the next 5 years and finally hatched the Adzuna plan in 2010 on the back of an envelope in a central London pub. The site was launched in July 2011.
Doug Monro was most recently COO of property portal Zoopla, leading the growth of the team from 5 to 75 people and the site to number 2 in UK property with 5M visitors a month. Previously he was MD of Gumtree.com, the UK’s largest classified ads site, and has worked for eBay UK, Bain & Co and Unilever. He has a BA in English from Cambridge and an MBA with distinction from Kellogg.
Andrew Hunter was mostly recently VP Marketing and General Manager of local review site Qype, where he grew the site from 0-17m monthly unique visitors in 2 years. Before Qype, Andrew was Head of Marketing at Gumtree.com and ran Search Marketing for the Thomas Cook Group. Andrew has a BSc in Business & Economics from Oxford Brookes University.
About Index Ventures
Index Ventures is a leading venture capital firm specializing in investments in information technology and life sciences companies. The firm invests in seed, early and growth stage start-ups across US and Europe. Since its inception in 1996, Index Ventures has backed visionary entrepreneurs who have taken on incumbents and built seminal companies in a number of growth sectors including: open source software companies such as MySQL, Trolltech, Zend and Pentaho; broadband and VOIP companies such as Virata, Skype, FON and Rebtel; Internet service companies such as Dropbox, Path, Betfair, Oanda, Last.fm, SpotRunner, Lovefilm, Stardoll and Netvibes; and life science companies such as Genmab, ParAllele Biosciences, BioXell, 7TM Pharma, Addex Pharmaceutical and PanGenetics.
About Passion Capital
Passion Capital (http://passioncapital.com) was established in March 2011 by Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero with the aim of becoming the premier early stage digital media and technology investment firm in the UK. The partners have more than 50 years’ collective experience in entrepreneurial, founding and executive operational roles in technology firms.
About The Accelerator Group (TAG)
Based in London, The Accelerator Group (TAG) has been an investor in early stage and start-up companies since 1995. They focus on the Internet services, eCommerce and multi-channel retail sectors, investing primarily in the US and Europe. TAG’s current investments include: Moo, Wonga, Moshi Monsters, Graze, Zoopla, Skimlinks and previously: LoveFilm, Fizzback, Tweetdeck and Dopplr.
http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
Adzuna, the next-generation job search engine, has today announced it has raised £500k investment financing from Index Ventures, The Accelerator Group and existing investors including Passion Capital. The latest funding follows a seed round last year.
Launched in July 2011, Adzuna classifieds aims to become the world’s leading search engine for classifieds, bringing together all the ads and connecting users with them in new ways.
Adzuna collates almost every job ad in the UK in real time from hundreds of websites, including all of the major job boards as well as sources like the London 2012 Olympics, Williams Formula 1 and the Royal Household. In addition to listing around 500,000 vacancies, the unique Adzuna Connect feature helps users “get hired with a little help from their friends” by connecting them to Adzuna jobs where they have first or second-degree connections on LinkedIn or Facebook.
The site also offers a wealth of data about the jobs and companies recruiting, from average salary data to employee reviews, interview questions and “CEO Approval ratings”.
Since launch in July, Adzuna has rapidly grown to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, and was named a Top 20 Startup of 2011 by Startups.co.uk, a finalist in the Website of the Year awards, and shortlisted for the Europas.
This latest round of funding will be used to drive further product innovation around social and data, and expand into other verticals as well as international markets.
Robin Klein, Venture Partner at Index, said, “We’re delighted to be working with Andrew and Doug, experienced entrepreneurs whom we know well from their track records at Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla. The Adzuna team has achieved a great deal in a short period of time, and we believe the innovations they continue to bring to the market will change the way people search for classified ads.”
Doug Monro, Co-Founder of Adzuna, said: “We’re really excited to have top-class investors like Index, The Accelerator Group and Passion involved. We are passionate about making the classifieds search experience fundamentally better for users in the UK and beyond. This will help us towards that vision.”
About Adzuna
Adzuna.co.uk (http://www.adzuna.co.uk) is a search engine for classified ads which makes it easier for you to find the right job locally – and soon properties and cars too. We search thousands of sites so you don’t have to, bring together millions of ads so you can find them all in one place, and organize them with useful features so that you can easily find what you need.
Adzuna founders Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro met working at Gumtree in 2005. They stayed in the local internet space for the next 5 years and finally hatched the Adzuna plan in 2010 on the back of an envelope in a central London pub. The site was launched in July 2011.
Doug Monro was most recently COO of property portal Zoopla, leading the growth of the team from 5 to 75 people and the site to number 2 in UK property with 5M visitors a month. Previously he was MD of Gumtree.com, the UK’s largest classified ads site, and has worked for eBay UK, Bain & Co and Unilever. He has a BA in English from Cambridge and an MBA with distinction from Kellogg.
Andrew Hunter was mostly recently VP Marketing and General Manager of local review site Qype, where he grew the site from 0-17m monthly unique visitors in 2 years. Before Qype, Andrew was Head of Marketing at Gumtree.com and ran Search Marketing for the Thomas Cook Group. Andrew has a BSc in Business & Economics from Oxford Brookes University.
About Index Ventures
Index Ventures is a leading venture capital firm specializing in investments in information technology and life sciences companies. The firm invests in seed, early and growth stage start-ups across US and Europe. Since its inception in 1996, Index Ventures has backed visionary entrepreneurs who have taken on incumbents and built seminal companies in a number of growth sectors including: open source software companies such as MySQL, Trolltech, Zend and Pentaho; broadband and VOIP companies such as Virata, Skype, FON and Rebtel; Internet service companies such as Dropbox, Path, Betfair, Oanda, Last.fm, SpotRunner, Lovefilm, Stardoll and Netvibes; and life science companies such as Genmab, ParAllele Biosciences, BioXell, 7TM Pharma, Addex Pharmaceutical and PanGenetics.
About Passion Capital
Passion Capital (http://passioncapital.com) was established in March 2011 by Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero with the aim of becoming the premier early stage digital media and technology investment firm in the UK. The partners have more than 50 years’ collective experience in entrepreneurial, founding and executive operational roles in technology firms.
About The Accelerator Group (TAG)
Based in London, The Accelerator Group (TAG) has been an investor in early stage and start-up companies since 1995. They focus on the Internet services, eCommerce and multi-channel retail sectors, investing primarily in the US and Europe. TAG’s current investments include: Moo, Wonga, Moshi Monsters, Graze, Zoopla, Skimlinks and previously: LoveFilm, Fizzback, Tweetdeck and Dopplr.
http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
2012年1月3日星期二
Travel smarter this year
Electronic communication, such as disposable mobile phones, cheap and easy Wi-Fi, and social networking, is revolutionizing the way we communicate when we travel. But the digital development I am most enthused about is the smartphone. My iPhone has quickly become my favourite travel companion, whether it’s keeping me on top of my work, keeping me in touch with my kids, or simply keeping me entertained.
I’m not alone. It was predicted that by the end of 2011, 40% of all Canadian mobile phone users will have a smartphone –iPhone, Android, Windows or BlackBerry — compared to just 10% in 2008. And as smartphones get more capable, they are becoming essential tools for travellers.
For instance, if I’m in a cafe in Paris that has free Wi-Fi, I can pop onto the Internet and check sports scores back home. If an impromptu soccer game breaks out on a piazza in Naples, I can record a video of it, then use the Dropbox application to send it to my assistant, who can post it to my Facebook page. Using Skype on my phone, I can connect to Wi-Fi and call my daughter in the U.S. for free.
About the only thing I don’t do with my smartphone when travelling is use it as an actual cellphone. When roaming in Europe with a North American phone, calls are expensive (often $1.50 per minute or higher). To save money, I use a phone I bought years ago in Europe and buy a new SIM card in each country I visit (a SIM card is a removable chip that stores your information).
A phone must be “unlocked” to swap out SIM cards (but be aware smartphones can be complicated to unlock). I make a lot of calls when I’m in Europe, but if you don’t, you might find it easier to roam with your own phone.
With smartphones, it’s important to watch dataroaming charges. A three-minute video from YouTube can cost about $40. While casual browsing and e-mailing costs less (around 20¢ to send or receive a basic message), charges can pile up quickly.
To avoid these costs, it’s easiest to cut off this feature by calling your carrier to disable it and turning off data roaming using your phone’s menu (before you get on your transatlantic flight). You can still use the Internet, but you’ll have to wait until you reach a Wi-Fi hotspot. Otherwise, for better rates, talk to your carrier about international dataroaming plans.
Even if you don’t use your smartphone for calls or data roaming, it can still come in handy thanks to the many travel-oriented applications that are available. Although I still prefer flipping through a paper guidebook, many publishers also offer travel guides in e-book format.
Apps for TripAdvisor and Yelp give you access to millions of user reviews of restaurants, hotels, and sights. And my Rick Steves Audio Europe app has radio interviews and audio walking tours of Europe’s top sights, such as the Acropolis and Versailles.
If you need to search for flights, hotels or rental cars, try Orbitz, Priceline, Booking.com,Expedia’s TripAssist and Travelocity. Skyscanner searches a variety of European budget airlines to find the cheapest connection.
TripIt is a clever app that stores all of your trip details in one place. Note that many apps (such as e-books) work on their own once you download them, but others (such as flight-search apps) need to access content online. You’ll either have to find a Wi-Fi hotspot or spring for data roaming to make them work.
To figure out train schedules, DB Navigator, German Rail’s comprehensive train timetables, includes connections for all of continental Europe. For the U.K., try thetrainline. Big cities, such as London and Paris, offer subway apps that save you from having to unfold an unwieldy map on a crowded platform.
If you don’t parlez-vous the local language, download Google Translate, which lets you type or speak foreign words for a translation. You can also say or type a sentence in English to hear a translation or see it written out. With Lonely Planet’s audio phrase-books, simply press a button to hear the phrase you’re struggling to pronounce.
Other useful travel apps include Measures, which converts various European units (such as clothing sizes and currency) to North American ones; the Weather Channel and AccuWeather, which help you figure out how to dress for the day; and mPassport, city-specific apps that direct you to English-speaking doctors and hospitals, as well as local names for prescription medications.
As more people travel with smartphones, I expect that more creative apps will become available. I am something of a tech holdout but if technology can make travel smoother and smarter, I’m all for it.
Rick Steves (ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com, or write to him c/o P.O. Box 2009, Edmonds, WA 98020.
http://tourism9.com/
I’m not alone. It was predicted that by the end of 2011, 40% of all Canadian mobile phone users will have a smartphone –iPhone, Android, Windows or BlackBerry — compared to just 10% in 2008. And as smartphones get more capable, they are becoming essential tools for travellers.
For instance, if I’m in a cafe in Paris that has free Wi-Fi, I can pop onto the Internet and check sports scores back home. If an impromptu soccer game breaks out on a piazza in Naples, I can record a video of it, then use the Dropbox application to send it to my assistant, who can post it to my Facebook page. Using Skype on my phone, I can connect to Wi-Fi and call my daughter in the U.S. for free.
About the only thing I don’t do with my smartphone when travelling is use it as an actual cellphone. When roaming in Europe with a North American phone, calls are expensive (often $1.50 per minute or higher). To save money, I use a phone I bought years ago in Europe and buy a new SIM card in each country I visit (a SIM card is a removable chip that stores your information).
A phone must be “unlocked” to swap out SIM cards (but be aware smartphones can be complicated to unlock). I make a lot of calls when I’m in Europe, but if you don’t, you might find it easier to roam with your own phone.
With smartphones, it’s important to watch dataroaming charges. A three-minute video from YouTube can cost about $40. While casual browsing and e-mailing costs less (around 20¢ to send or receive a basic message), charges can pile up quickly.
To avoid these costs, it’s easiest to cut off this feature by calling your carrier to disable it and turning off data roaming using your phone’s menu (before you get on your transatlantic flight). You can still use the Internet, but you’ll have to wait until you reach a Wi-Fi hotspot. Otherwise, for better rates, talk to your carrier about international dataroaming plans.
Even if you don’t use your smartphone for calls or data roaming, it can still come in handy thanks to the many travel-oriented applications that are available. Although I still prefer flipping through a paper guidebook, many publishers also offer travel guides in e-book format.
Apps for TripAdvisor and Yelp give you access to millions of user reviews of restaurants, hotels, and sights. And my Rick Steves Audio Europe app has radio interviews and audio walking tours of Europe’s top sights, such as the Acropolis and Versailles.
If you need to search for flights, hotels or rental cars, try Orbitz, Priceline, Booking.com,Expedia’s TripAssist and Travelocity. Skyscanner searches a variety of European budget airlines to find the cheapest connection.
TripIt is a clever app that stores all of your trip details in one place. Note that many apps (such as e-books) work on their own once you download them, but others (such as flight-search apps) need to access content online. You’ll either have to find a Wi-Fi hotspot or spring for data roaming to make them work.
To figure out train schedules, DB Navigator, German Rail’s comprehensive train timetables, includes connections for all of continental Europe. For the U.K., try thetrainline. Big cities, such as London and Paris, offer subway apps that save you from having to unfold an unwieldy map on a crowded platform.
If you don’t parlez-vous the local language, download Google Translate, which lets you type or speak foreign words for a translation. You can also say or type a sentence in English to hear a translation or see it written out. With Lonely Planet’s audio phrase-books, simply press a button to hear the phrase you’re struggling to pronounce.
Other useful travel apps include Measures, which converts various European units (such as clothing sizes and currency) to North American ones; the Weather Channel and AccuWeather, which help you figure out how to dress for the day; and mPassport, city-specific apps that direct you to English-speaking doctors and hospitals, as well as local names for prescription medications.
As more people travel with smartphones, I expect that more creative apps will become available. I am something of a tech holdout but if technology can make travel smoother and smarter, I’m all for it.
Rick Steves (ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com, or write to him c/o P.O. Box 2009, Edmonds, WA 98020.
http://tourism9.com/
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