Online ad co Kontera raises $10.3m

Carmel Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Lehman Brothers Venture Capital, participated in the second financing round.

16 August 07 16:14, Shmulik Shelah

Sources inform ''Globes'' that online advertising solutions developer Kontera Technologies Inc. has raised $10.3 million in its second financing round. Carmel Ventures, and two current investors Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers Venture Capital, participated in the round. According to IVC Online, the company has raised $18 million to date.

Kontera CEO Yoav Shaham and VP product development Assaf Henkin founded the company in 2000. The easiest way to describe the company’s product is to compare it to context advertising such as Google’s AdSense. Kontera is developing personalized context-based advertising, but collates the advertisements in a different way from AdSense. Kontera positions advertisements as information accompanying the pertinent online text, where as AdSense positions the advertisements on the side of the webpage.

Shaham does not care for the comparison, saying “It’s like comparing a car to a truck, simply because both are vehicles. Although we’re both in the same field, each solution has its own advantages and disadvantages in how it advertises. I’d prefer to call it a supplementary product.”

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on August 16, 2007

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