| VigLink Gets Funding For Affiliate Links From Google Ventures, First Round Capital |
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12/01/2010 18:39 (756 Day 20:57 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- VigLink is a new service with venture capital backing from Google that aims to make it easy for publishers to earn through affiliate programs, according to Searchengineland.com. It promises to turn any outbound link on a web site into an affiliate link after the installation of a small bit of JavaScript code.
Readwriteweb.com reports that the company announced today that it closed a seed investment round and it has a laundry list of technology insiders as backers, including First Round Capital, Google Ventures, LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, longtime Google executive and current LinkedIn VP of Product Deep Nishar and a number of noted technology entrepreneurs.
Many online merchants, Amazon.com being the best-known, have affiliate programs that pay referring sites for visitors when their browsing leads to a purchase, Cnet News informs. In many cases, even if the purchase occurs on a visit days after the user first clicked over to the site, the referring site can still get an affiliate payment. So it's financially in the interest of any content site to use affiliate coding in links to commerce sites.
VigLink, which can be enabled on any site by adding simple Javascript to the site's template, automatically converts links to commerce sites that are already on a site into properly-coded affiliate links--but only when they're clicked, so they don't look different when users hover over the links, according to the same source. The service also makes it much easier for publishers to take advantage of affiliate programs by acting as a commercial proxy for all affiliates at once; publishers don't have to sign up with individual programs. VigLink will take a cut of money earned.
The Google Ventures investment in VigLink, which actually occurred in June but was not announced at the time, gave Bill Maris who is a Managing Partner of Google Ventures a board seat at the company, Reuters reports. Miner told Reuters in a separate interview on Monday that he also sits on the boards of two other Google Ventures portfolio companies while Maris is a director at Adimab Inc, a biotech company that Google invested an undisclosed amount in October.
Miner would not disclose how much of the $100 million the fund has invested so far. According to Miner, Google Ventures has made a total of eight investments to date, though only seven of the investments have been publicly disclosed, according to the same source. Google, the world's No.1 Internet search company, launched its venture capital arm in March 2009, with the stated goal of seeking investment opportunities to maximize returns rather than looking for investments that strictly fit with Google's strategic vision.
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