Web 2.0 Designers

Mktng Conversion’s Widemile Raises $4M

Seattle-based Widemile has raised $4M in convertible note financing. It had raised $5.5M in 2005. The startup sells advise to online marketers and search advertisers about how to maximize ad campaign performance and spending efficiency by testing and optimizing their landing pages and other web content for higher conversion rates. Customers include: Microsoft, SmartSheet.com, The Weather Channel Interactive, OneWebHosting, Charter Communications and MIVA.

If it sounds interesting, Widmile charges about $15K to test and optimize an individual Web page.Widmile’s competitors are led by Optimost and Offermatica (acquired for $65M by Omniture recently.)

Read - announcement
Read- Seattle PI

Indian City Review Site AskLaila Raises $10M

Bangalore-based Four Interactive has raised $10M in series B funding for its AskLaila.com business. The round is led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and joined by Silicon Valley Bank and return backer Matrix Partners India. Matrix had invested $2M in Series A round.

AskLaila.com presents reviews on food, events, lifestyle, shopping and more for Indians. It currently covers Bangalore but plans to cover to Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Our own review is that it’s not a terribly impressive site, but then we don’t live in India so perhaps there is a dearth of information of this kind there. We expected to see something like Yelp with extensive user reviews but it appears more like an online magazine with articles that review the cities best buffets for example.

Read - VC circle

Montreal’s Praized Media Seed Funded For Local Networking

Pre-launch Praized Media has raised $1M from Garage Ventures Technology Canada. The company says it is “working on a web-based application that will enable you to find and discover local places and merchants with help from people you can trust. It’s also a tool that will structure local conversations within blogs and a new platform for local search providers to generate leads from the untapped social media market.”

The startup is led by Sebastien Provencher, formerly of Yellow Pages Group in Canada.

Auto’s Zag.com Raises $20M

Santa Monica-based Zag.com has raised $13.5M in a round led by Capricorn Investment Group. It has been thirsty for capital having raised $46M in equity funding plus $21M in debt since April 2005 launch.

Zag’s premise is to allow consumers to buy new cars at the lowest possible price. The company partners with dealers nationwide who agree to list their best possible prices. Zag wants to allow consumers to complete more of the auto-buying transaction online: selection, pricing, searching inventory and accessorizing, financing and insurance.

Zag is also available on a private label basis to affinity and membership organizations. The company is led by Scott Painter who is founder and former CEO of CarsDirect.com and founder and chairman of Build-To-Order

Subscription Site Network Waterfront Media Raises $25M More

Online health is a hot sector again and we notice that Waterfront Media is branding itself more as a health play than it did previously. The company operates a number of premium web sites that for the most part are tied to best selling self-help books. In the past Waterfront had ties-ins to religious books like the Left Behind Series, but now most of its sites and book tie ins are to weight loss books like Bikini Bootcamp, Winsor Diet, etc. Waterfront Media’s central portal is called Everyday Health and it claims to be the 3 most trafficked health portal at this point.

Brooklyn-based Waterfront Media has just closed $25M in fourth-round funding led by Scale Venture Partners with Foundation Capital and return backers Rho Ventures, Time Warner Ventures, BEV Capital, and Neocarta Ventures. It previously had raised $10M in VC funding, plus $8M in venture debt.

Waterfront says it did $34M in revenues last year and now has a headcount of 120.

View - site

emand Media Goes For The Gusto With $100M Round

Santa Monica-based Demand Media has raised $100M in a 3rd-round funding with Goldman Sachs stepping in to write a big check. It has now raised $320M. Prior investors are 3i Group, Generation Partners, Oak Investment Partners and Spectrum Equity Investors.

Demand is a domain name 2.0 company, which has aggregated a store of buying domain with organic traffic and it has been adding social networking features to them. So for example, it has launched ChannelMe.tv
where you can go to buy domains with .tv suffixe

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