The Israeli edtech company OpenWeb (OpenWeb), formerly Spot IM, has completed a fundraising of 170 million dollars, according to a value of 1.5 billion dollars – this is what the company reported today (Thursday) afternoon. The fundraising was led by Georgian Partners, a Canadian fund known in Israel as “Canadian Insight” due to the diversification of its investments.
Although the company is active in the advertising sector, which suffers from price pressures, and its companies report a decrease in revenue, Ofen Web managed to increase its value from $1.15 billion in November last year to $1.5 billion today.
Ofen Web allows news websites to integrate a component of comment management and discussion in the lower part of the articles and next to them an advertisement slot for articles and marketing content, in a model reminiscent of Tabula and Outbrain. Later, it added additional services to the news sites – such as a live blogging system, surveys and questionnaires, knowledge management tools, and an advertising ad management network. Earlier this year, Ofen Web purchased the French Adiolike for $100 million, which helps news sites collect direct information about users under strict privacy laws.
Last June, Ofen Web embarked on a round of cutbacks as part of which it fired 14 development personnel, 10% of the employees in Israel, moved the rest of the management members to New York and reduced the number of working days per week to four – and the salaries accordingly. Today it can be reported that the working week at the company has returned to a routine of five days, but the status of the employees has not changed: the company employs 300 people worldwide, of which 100 are in Israel.
Despite the challenging environment in the field of advertising, in a web way they benefit from the need for news sites to find quick revenue streams, while at the same time continuing to collect information about readers in accordance with the new privacy laws. Instead of relying on external software that collects information about users from their behavior on other websites and apps, the news websites seek to collect this information by engaging the readers directly – through surveys, questionnaires or discussions conducted on top of the article, in what is known in the industry as first party data, that is, information “first-hand”.
According to CEO and founder Nadav Shuval, the company will become profitable next year, so it will consider going public. According to him, the company’s revenues double every six months, this year as well.
***Disclosure: Globes is a customer of Ofen Web.