OpenWeb, which helps publishers target readers with ads, raises $170 million
Summary
- The firm, now valued at $1.5 billion, plans to move further into ad sales and eventually go public, its CEO says
Open Web Technologies Ltd., which helps publishers engage readers and target them with ads, raised $170 million in a Series F round led by Canadian venture firm Georgian Partners, the company said.
The new round values OpenWeb at $1.5 billion, up from $1 billion in its previous round, according to the company.
The funding arrives at a time when venture-capital firms and other investors have largely cooled on tech startups.
OpenWeb launched in Israel in 2014 to help publishers add comment threads to their stories. It later expanded its services to include live-blogging, polling and data-management tools, as well as the placement of ads across publishers’ sites.
Earlier this year, the company acquired French digital advertising firm Adyoulike for $100 million in cash and stock in order to help clients collect first-party data from their readers for ad-targeting purposes.
The money raised in this round will be used to expand the company’s data-collection services, and perhaps to make acquisitions to bolster its tech capabilities, said Nadav Shoval, co-founder and chief executive.
OpenWeb sees opportunity for growth in the coming months as the media ecosystem restructures itself under macroeconomic pressure, while publishers attempt to create more sustainable businesses and prepare for the disappearance of so-called third-party cookies, which have tracked users around the web and powered digital advertising for years, said Mr. Shoval.
“We believe that this is a very important time to invest and take smart risks, because we think that some of the best companies in the world will be created in the next 24 months," he said.
OpenWeb, which operates a hybrid model combining software-as-a-service subscription fees with a cut of publishers’ ad revenue, will be profitable for the first time next year and expects to go public at some point in the future, Mr. Shoval said. He declined to disclose the company’s revenue, but said it has doubled in each of the past six years and is on track to do so again in 2022.
OpenWeb’s revenue churn, or the percentage of total subscription fees it loses each year, is less than 1%, he said.
OpenWeb counts more than 1,000 publishers as clients, most of which are based in North America, Mr. Shoval said. The company is now based in New York.
The firm achieved unicorn status last November with a $150 million Series E funding round that included The New York Times Co., ad conglomerate Dentsu Group Inc. and Samsung Next, the investment division of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. OpenWeb has raised $393 million to date.
The firm began working directly with brands and media agencies after its Adyoulike acquisition, and ad sales will play a larger role in its business moving forward, said Mr. Shoval.
The company also focuses on content-moderation services to help protect both publishers and readers from harassment, hate speech and offensive content.
Last year, OpenWeb announced that it would end its relationships with 50 publishers that had failed to meet standards for accurate information established by third-party partners, among them the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit organization that rates news organizations based on the probability they will publish demonstrably false information.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
