LeadPoint, a site that provides online lead-generation tools for advertising buyers and web publisher sellers, has raised $6 million in a round led by Silicon Valley Bank Ventures, with Redpoint Ventures participating. Los Angeles-based LeadPoint calls itself "the first and largest leads exchange" marketplace on the web. Online lead generation broadly means helping advertisers to find potential customers via search results, and various forms of advertising.
LeadPoint helps advertisers in auto, real-estate, mortgage, debt and other industries purchase various forms of ads that appear as paid search ads, organic search, as well as ads on portals and other web sites sites. Its services include letting you create order forms for the types of ads buyers would like, as well as tracking, bidding and matching of ads between buyers and sellers, reporting and billing. The company claims that its marketplace platform has worked so well that it has gained market share and expanded across a number of industry verticals -- even as competitors saw business drop off due to vertical advertisers like large mortgage companies collapsing earlier this year. However, not all competitors are doing poorly, it seems: Education-focused lead generation company Lead Media Partners has also just raised an undisclosed amount of funding. Leadpoint has also seen growth in verticals like education and credit repair -- in a business like lead gen, as long as buyers and sellers are making money from your service, you can still make money even during hard times. Previously, in 2007, LeadPoint increased its number of sellers by 67 percent and its number of buyers by 90 percent although the company isn't releasing specific traffic numbers.