Perfect Market in the News: Comcast Funding Highlights
Earlier this month, Perfect Market announced a $9 million round of funding led by Comcast Interactive Capital. Here are a few of the highlights from news outlets that covered the investment.
With the exception of The Wall Street Journal, large American newspaper Web sites have so far remained free…
Tim Ruder, chief revenue officer of Perfect Market, a news media consultant, said that what worked for small papers would not necessarily work for large papers. But he added that since no larger national papers have switched from free to partial pay, it was difficult to make any guesses. “How well that success will translate to larger sites depends on many things, including the quality, nature and exclusivity of content,” he said.
New York Times: Under Pay Model, Little Effect Seen on Papers’ Web Traffic
Perfect Market Inc. has raised another $9 million — bringing its total funding to $28 million — for technology and services to help publishers generate web traffic, and make more money off their content.
Wall Street Journal: Perfect Market Raises $9 Million More To Boost Content Visibility, Publishers’ Revenue
The money will also allow Perfect Market to build out the product to match what [Julie] Schoenfeld said is an expanding vision. It’s no longer just about optimizing older articles for search engines, she said, but rather building tools for “adaptive publishing,” where the reading experience is customized for whatever way readers are consuming your content.
“Search was one instance, social is another instance,” she said. “We’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t just be thinking about your home page and your section fronts anymore.”
New York Times: Perfect Market Raises $9M to Fund Newspaper Moneymaking Tools
Perfect Market‘s main offering is a service that hosts big publishers’ old stories in a Google-friendly way, and sells ads against the archived content. The very short pitch: Why let Demand Media and its ilk get all the search ad dollars?
Things are getting more interesting now, though, as the company rolls out analytics and a dashboard that is supposed to help writers and editors figure out how to make the stories they’re writing now make more money in the future, via SEO-like tips.
All Things D: Perfect Market Raises Another $9 Million to Help Papers Sell Old News
So far, Perfect Market’s customers have included: Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel. Its content optimization technology addresses text content primarily, today. This year, Perfect Market aims to grow its video content optimization business, and to develop tools or acquire technologies (or startups) that can help media capitalize on location-based and mobile trends, [Julie] Schoenfeld confirmed.
TechCrunch: Perfect Market Raises $9 Million More To Boost Content Visibility, Publishers’ Revenue
The process of making older articles visible involves a healthy dose of so-called search engine optimization, through which Web pages are outfitted with keywords and other computer code intended to act as digital beacons that can attract Google, Bing and other search services.
When a given Web page appears high in Google or Bing search results, more people generally click on it, which translates to advertising dollars -- or more often, cents -- to news publishers.
Lost Angeles Times: Perfect Market, news ad firm, lands $9 million in funding round led by Comcast
The Pasadena, Calif. startup works with publishers to optimize their content for search engines, delivering a customized (usually stripped-down) version of an article page for users visiting from search engines, with advertising targeted at that particular audience. It also offers data to publishers about what articles could earn the most money. Customers include the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel.
VentureBeat: Perfect Market raises $9M to fund newspaper moneymaking tools
The new cash comes as the company says it is growing very rapidly. CEO Julie Schoenfeld tells us the number of customers Perfect Market serves has quadrupled over the last year. Customers include Tribune Co.-owned Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as the Hearst Corporation. Schoenfeld also says the company will now be adding some new customers “connected to things relevant to Comcast.”
paidContent.org: Perfect Market Raises $9 Million In A Round Led By Comcast
In fact, the Los Angeles Times was Perfect Market’s first client and, according to CEO Julie Schoenfeld, “results were tremendous.” The company’s website claims that the program has generated a 20x-30x increase in revenue for clients, from when they first started employing Perfect Market…
Essentially, Schoenfeld says, Perfect Market “provides the technology wrapper that goes around content.”
VatorNews: Perfect Market raises $9M to revive old media
socalTech: "Your customers--newspaper publishers--are struggling to redefine themselves in the era of the Internet, and have had some financial issues. How do you convince them to implement and adopt your systems?"
Julie Schoenfeld: "Interesting, the Los Angeles Times was one of our first customers. The result of what we did for them was so good, we rolled out to the rest of the Tribune news properties. In our last round of funding, Tribune led the round. Here, we have a customer which has not only implemented us, but also invested in us. That's what we are finding. When those publishers see things that work, they're willing to step in. Having said that, the newspaper business model has had to change radically, particularly with regard to cost structure. The problem is, that has cut down on the staff those publishers have, and they don't have extra resources to try out new things. One thing that Perfect Market has done, is we've made it so they can implement this without forcing them to put lots of resources into it. We take care of the whole solution for them."
socalTech.com: Julie Schoenfeld On Perfect Market's New Funding
"CIC’s managing director, David Horowitz, will join Perfect Market’s board of directors, according to The Times’ report. Perfect Market has begun providing advertising services to some of Comcast’s businesses, The Times said."
Bizjournals.com: Comcast invests in online publishing consultant
"Perfect Market’s clients include print publications like the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Orlando Sentinel; Schoenfeld said the company continues to seek out smaller publications to partner with for content and advertising opportunities."
peHub: Perfect Market’s Perfect Storm
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