One company focused on creating personalized ads in real time, MyThings, announced that it raised $15 million in a round led by Iris Capital and alongside Accel Partners, Carmel Ventures and T-Venture.
The London-based MyThings specializes in creating personalized ads in real time for each viewer on a per-impression basis. The current round of financing will help myThings’ continue growth across Europe and its expansion to new markets. The total funding to date for MyThings is $22 million.
This investment in MyThings is the first distribution of the $400 million-plus fund from mobile operator Orange, ad giant Publicis and Iris Capital Management.
MyThings launched in 2005, is strong on the trend that companies must improve engagement and effectiveness of online advertising, even if it means making adjustments on a user-by-user basis.
MyThings already operates portals in France, Spain and the UK that together receive 30 million users per month.
How this personalized advertising works is, when a user is surfing the internet and visits websites, there is a chance that they will hit some of the 300 other sites in the myThings network and then they are charted and “tagged” based on the content they viewed, then MyThings tailors the ads the users see so that it reflects content that they most likely will be interested in.
MyThings, which has roughly 100 employees spread across France, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and Russia, with engineering and data teams based in Tel Aviv. The company also claims that it has entered a profitable state as of last year.
While MyThings currently focuses its technology on the Web browser environment, the company is poised to move into the mobile-Web and app world in coming months.
The fact that MyThings has not tackled mobile apps and mobile-Web yet shouldn't yet be a big concern since a recent survey showed that users have not adopted apps and mobile Web shopping as fast as many were expecting.
Despite all that we have heard about consumers trusting specific mobile apps for their transactions, Nielsen has found that most of the U.S. shoppers are using the Web more than tailored apps.
As retailer continue to build their sites, products and apps to serve the mobile world, it is crucial to understand where people are going to learn and purchase items and why they are picking these methods over others.
If retailers continue to shovel money into specific mobile apps, they may need to better market and cross-reference these options to their mobile users so that they can capture the audience and control the user experience better.
It also is important to assure shopping security measures are taken into the mobile environment since we reported this past holiday season that the growing dependance on our smartphones will play a bigger role than ever on our shopping behavior.
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MyThings actually grew out of Trace, which helps law enforcement ensure nobody is selling or buying stolen items. To help you avoid adding your prized possessions to Trace, MyThings has a rather intense privacy policy. We require no personal information aside from an email address (which we don’t reveal) to make sure you’re as anonymous as you want to be.
Of course, just because you’re anonymous doesn’t mean you can’t be friendly. Items you've added can be private and completely invisible or public and open to the community. The MyThings community is the heart of the site, and is full of lovely people who are passionate about the things they own and are there to share their stories. MyThings members connect with each other about the things they love most, comparing their experiences with digital cameras and appliances, or auction houses and antiques.
