Taboola provides a video content recommendation platform. Its marketplace has marketers and brands on one side, who bid to distribute their content on top publisher sites, and algorithms on the other side, to match content with the most relevant users and predict what they want to watch. Brands and marketers use the technology to maximize their reach and optimize audience engagement.

The company compares its service to Twitter Promoted Tweets or Facebook Promoted Stories. It serves 1.5 billion recommendations daily on sites including Time.com, NY Times, Fox Broadcasting, USA Today, Bloomberg, The Weather Channel, and BusinessWeek. Taboola helps publishers “re-circulate” their own traffic by generating on-site content recommendations. (VentureBeat uses Taboola, whose recommendations appear at the bottom of every story on our site.)

Video advertising is expected to be a major trend of 2013. The technology surrounding video production and distribution has made online video ads a powerful option for businesses and consumers alike. Furthermore, studies show the more targeted the ad, the more effective it is. Taboola is capitalizing on all these trends.

After experiencing significant growth in 2012, largely spurred by the $10 million round Taboola closed in June, this funding brings the total capital raised to $25 million. Israeli firm Pitango VC led the $15 million investment, with participation from existing investors Evergreen Venture Partners, WGI Group, and Market. Taboola is based in New York City.

Read the press release. 

Photo credit: Annie Mole/Flickr

The mission of Legolas Media is to provide insights to allow for more precise advertisement targeting. The company does this by providing a marketplace where buyers and sellers of digital advertising space can trade audiences similar to how stock investors trade futures. Companies construct audience segments and target them across a number of publishers.

The funding was led by Valhalla Partners and existing investors Greylock Partners and Blumberg Capital also participated in the round. Valhalla’s Kiran Hebbar will be joining the board as a result of the round.

Says Kiran Hebbar, a Partner at Valhalla Partners, “We are very interested in the Legolas team and the opportunity. The idea of a marketplace where brand advertisers can deliver high value campaigns with premium inventory and targetable audience is a winning idea.”

Legolas media, which was founded in 2009, is based in New York.