Israeli adtech company OpenWeb (formerly Spot IM), has completed a $170 million fund raising round at a valuation of $1.5 billion, the company reported this afternoon. The round was led by Georgian, a Canadian venture capital form known in Israel as “the Canadian Insight” because of the diversity of its investments.
Although OpenWeb’s business is advertising, an industry suffering from downward pressure on prices, with companies reporting declining revenue, OpenWeb has managed to raise its valuation from $1.15 billion last November to $1.5 billion today.
OpenWeb enables news websites to place a responses component at the bottom of news items and places advertisements for articles and marketing content, on a model similar to that of Outbrain and Taboola. The company has added further services for news websites, such as a live blogging system, surveys, and questionnaires, information management tools, and an advertising management network. Earlier this year, OpenWeb bought French company Adyoulike, which helps news websites gather direct information on users, in the wake of tough privacy legislation.
In June this year, OpenWeb laid off fourteen development workers, 10% of its workforce in Israel, transferred the rest of its management to New York, and reduced its workdays to four a week, with pay falling accordingly. The company’s working week has now been restored to five days, but the workforce has not changed. It employs 300 people around the world, 100 of them in Israel.
Despite the challenging advertising environment, OpenWeb benefits from the need of news websites to find quick revenue channels, and at the same time to continue gathering information on users in accordance with new privacy laws. Instead of relying on external programs that gather information on users from their behavior on websites and other applications, news sites seek to gather this information through active participation by their readers, by means of surveys, questionnaires, or conversations about an article, in what is known as first party data.
According to CEO and founder Nadav Shoval, OpenWeb will become profitable next year, when it will examine the possibility of a flotation. He says that the company’s revenue doubles every six months, even this year.
“Globes” is a customer of OpenWeb.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on October 27, 2022.
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