Gigya Raises $11 Million Series C Round

Gigya, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of tracking solutions for online widget makers, has raised $11 million in Series C funding. DAG Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers Mayfield, Benchmark Capital and First Round Capital. The company has now raised $24.5 million in total funding.

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

Gigya today announced that it closed an $11MM series C funding round led by DAG Ventures. Gigya’s technologies enable publishers and advertisers to distribute their content across the web to the places their target audiences are spending time, and empowers people to share that content with each other. Gigya has gained considerable momentum since its Series B round, led by Mayfield Fund with participation from Benchmark Capital and First Round Capital in March of this year, nearly doubling the size of its network and surpassing revenue goals. According to comScore, Gigya is the largest content sharing platform, reaching more than 158 million unique persons monthly. The company installs 15 million widgets to more than 50 online destinations and tracks six billion installed widget impressions each month. The funding will be used to meet increasingly high demand for both new and existing products and features.

 

“DAG has been impressed with Gigya’s track record of developing innovative products that capitalize on fundamental shifts in the web landscape, and with their ability to monetize and scale those products quickly,” stated Young Chung, Managing Director of DAG Ventures. “With its massive audience and critical role in reducing friction in the social and portable web, Gigya is changing the game for publishers and advertisers and opening up huge new avenues for monetization.”

 

Partners and publishers using Gigya’s Wildfire widget platform include CNET, DoubleClick, Eyeblaster, IAC, Jib-Jab, Oxygen and RockYou. Gigya’s pioneering performance-based social advertising network fuels widget advertising campaigns for top brands including Toyota, Walmart, Unilever, Levis, Nike, Disney Home Entertainment, and Kimberly-Clark. Both products provide leading-edge reporting, analytics, and monetization tools that help advertisers and publishers understand and optimize their social media initiatives.

 

Gigya’s most recent product, Socialize, was launched in May 2008 to help publishers grow both audience and engagement by taking advantage of the capabilities provided by social networks who have opened their platforms. Socialize enables website publishers to easily connect social features on their websites to the friend lists and communication tools provided by multiple social networks like MySpace and Facebook, along with webmail services like Gmail, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL.  Electronic Arts and Fox Searchlight are two of the first companies to be working on large-scale implementations of the service.

 

“Our focus continues to be on providing innovative yet accessible technologies and services that enable our partners and customers to focus on what they do best – developing great user experiences,” stated Rooly Eliezerov, President and co-founder of Gigya. “The results have been overwhelming, and raising this pre-emptive round with a partner like DAG gives us the freedom to meet growing demand while continuing to innovate for the future.”

 

About Gigya

Gigya gives people the power to socialize and share content across the web, providing publishers and marketers with powerful tools for increasing audience reach and engagement online.  Reaching more than 158 million people each month, Gigya’s technology platform includes world-class sharing, analytics and monetization features.  The company’s products simplify access to more than 50 unique web platforms, distributing content across the social web and bringing users’ social graphs to any site.  Each day, millions of people use Gigya to engage with their friends and with content from Gigya’s publisher and advertiser clients such as CNET, DoubleClick, Electronic Arts, Levis, MTV, RockYou!, Toyota, Unilever and Walmart.  Gigya was founded by three Israeli entrepreneurs, Rooly Eliezerov, Eran Kutner, and Eyal Magen.