Swoop, a company that works with food websites to automatically inject relevant deals, coupons, and ads, has raised $3 million of a $5 million Series B, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing was first spotted by Mass High Tech.
When the service launched in February, CEO Ron Elwell pitched it as a way for publishers to create a "search discovery" experience on their sites. If you're looking up recipes, a natural next step is to figure out a place where you can buy the ingredients at a low price — with Swoop, publishers can provide that information without directing visitors to another site.
Elwell also told me that the technology could be used in other areas, like baby and beauty products.
A visit to the Swoop website suggests that the model hasn't changed too much. The company is also pitching itself as "a Native Advertising service that seamlessly integrates relevant information about products and services," and it features case studies on how food brands ran Swoop campaigns and saw much higher engagement rates than standard display advertising. At the same time, Swoop still says most of its content consists of automatically aggregated deals and coupons, rather than advertising. (In the screenshot above, you can see regular Swoop links and a butter-related ad.)
In addition to Elwell, Swoop's founding team includes CTO Simeon Simeonov. Both Elwell and Simeonov have VC experience — Elwell was a partner at Bessemer Ventures, while Simeonov was an executive in residence at General Catalyst Partners and a technology partner at Polaris Venture Partners.
I've emailed Swoop for confirmation, and will update if I hear back. The company previously raised $4.8 million from US Venture Partners, Valhalla Partners, and General Catalyst. The filing doesn't say who's investing in the new round.
Swoop is a Native Advertising service that seamlessly integrates relevant information about products and services – at times in the form of sponsored content or advertising – into the content that consumers are engaged with online. Through its patent pending technology Swoop has made a breakthrough that allows for Conceptual Advertising; the ability to understand not just the content, but the actual human concepts that are being expressed. This provides Advertisers with the Intent and Relevancy...
Sim Simeonov is the founder and CEO of FastIgnite where he helps entrepreneurs shape promising ideas, raise capital, build teams and execute across all stages of the startup lifecycle. Sim is also co-founder of NYC-based Better Advertising and San Francisco-based Thing Labs (makers of Brizzly and Plinky) and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the MIT E-Center. Sim blogs at blog.simeonov.com, tweets as @simeons and lives in the Greater Boston area with his wife, son and an adopted dog named Tye. Prior to starting...
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