Burt Gets Funded

Online advertising is an industry full of problems and possibilities. Hence, there are a lot of start-ups working in that sphere from different angles. Burt is a Swedish company founded in 2009 that makes software tools for the advertising industry. Their three main products include Copybox (a tool for copyrighters), Meme Machine (cloud computing for marketing data) and Rich (online campaign analytics tool). Burt recently closed $3M funding from Industrifonden. The new investment is said to be used for international expansion and further improvement of their campaign analytics tool Rich. This is Burt's second investment since foundation. Back in 2009 the company received $500,000 angel funding.

Both of Burt's founders, Gustav von Sydow and Gustav Martner, come from advertising industry, which helps them identify and build tools necessary to improve the industry's performance online. Rich is probably their most successful product because it solves a real problem for online advertisers: how to accurately measure online performance of their campaigns. There is clearly a need for a tool like that since there are quite a few other companies building a similar application.

Rich distinguishes itself by focusing on the media industry and offering analytics that form a more complete overview of the environment in which their ads are being displayed. As a result ad-buyers can compare online performance of their ads with broadcast and print advertising and media agencies get a greater control over ads, their vital revenue source.

Those who doubt the value proposition holds true can take a look at Rich's track record so far. Launched in 2010, it has already analyzed over 10 billion ads and signed up SAS, Bonnier and Stampen among others as their customers. Burt also claim they have pilot projects underway with global creative agencies in other countries.

The new investment is bound to catapult Burt and their product Rich into a whole new league. Industrifonden has an unquestionable experience in building analytics companies. In March 2011 the fund exited with a hefty profit its former portfolio company, QlikTech, which is a multi-billion dollar company listed on NASDAQ.

Image by AMagill


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