VigLink

Last updated
VigLink
IndustryMarketing, Advertising
FoundedSan Francisco, USA (March 2009 (2009-03))
Founder Oliver Roup, CEO
Headquarters
San Francisco   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
ProductsVigLink Convert, VigLink Insert, VigLink Anywhere
ServicesIn-text Advertising and Marketing

VigLink is a San Francisco-based, outbound-traffic monetization service for publishers, forums, and bloggers. VigLink specializes in in-text advertising and marketing. [1] [2] [3] [4] VigLink CEO Oliver Roup founded the company in March 2009. [5] [6] [7]

Contents

In 2012, Oliver Roup reported VigLink was working on 5 billion pages per month. [8]

As of November 2014, VigLink has raised $27.34 million and is working with 63,000 online retailers including EBay, Target, Amazon.com, and Wal-Mart. [9] [10] [11] [12]

Service

VigLink's content monetization solution connects potential consumers to products by hyperlinking particular keywords in a website's content. [1] [3] [7] [9]

The company's technology, VigLink Insert, scans a page for words that could be potentially profitable to the publisher of the page, and connects the keyword with a product from an affiliate program. [3] [4] The publisher is paid when a reader clicks a link contained in the content to buy or learn more about a service or product. [3] [7] [12]

VigLink also offers an outbound analytics service for clients to understand where readers go when they leave their site. [8] [13] [14]

Products

VigLink's first service, called VigLink Convert, operates using a JavaScript library that customers install on their web site to identify and monetize all potential links to any of the 30,000 merchants working with VigLink. [8] [12] [14] [15] [16]

The company also offers an NLP-powered link-insertion solution, VigLink Insert, to automatically insert links into a publisher's content without detracting from reader experience. [14] [16]

VigLink Anywhere is the startup's newest product. [16] [17] The Anywhere service is geared towards social media, allowing users to monetize links shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other channels. [16] [17]

History

Founding and early investors

Oliver Roup founded VigLink in 2009, after discovering that less than 50% of links to Amazon.com on the web were engaged in the affiliate program. [1] [7] [14] [18] [19] The VigLink product was in market by January 2010. [8]

The same month the product was released in market, VigLink received $800,000 in seed funding from First Round Capital and Google Ventures. [2] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] Other investors included LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and VP for Products at LinkedIn, Deep Nishar. [14] [20] [23] [25]

Acquisitions and technological developments

In August 2010, VigLink announced it had acquired competitor company DrivingRevenue.com. [24] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] The cofounder of DrivingRevenue, Raymond Lyle, became the president of VigLink. [26] [29] [31] The acquisition brought over $100 million in transactions from merchandise to the company. [24] [27] [29] [30] [32]

The startup closed a Series B funding round in March 2011. [5] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] The $5.4 million round was led by Emergence Capital, with continued funding from Google Ventures and First Round Capital. [5] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] Emergence Capital partner Kevin Spain also became a member of the VigLink board. [34] [35] [37]

In November 2011, VigLink debuted the new LinkWeaver service. [1] [38] [39] [40] [41] The new technology functioned to enhance VigLink's automated link affiliation by detecting merchant and product references within a website's content and linking them to relevant merchant pages. [38] [39] [40] [41] Contrary to alternative in-text methods, the LinkWeaver solution was designed to seek out direct merchant and product references and to avoid hyperlinking keywords to products unrelated to the website's content. [39] [40] In April, 2013, the company renamed its LinkWeaver product to VigLink Insert.

On June 12, 2012, the company announced it had integrated with vBulletin, granting VigLink access to 100,000 forum websites. [42] [43] [44] [45] VigLink also reported that it was processing over 500 million clicks every month. [44]

The following October, VigLink announced a new partnership with iTunes and iOS App Store link optimization service, GeoRiot. [46] [47] [48]

In May 2013, blog advertising company Skyscraper announced its partnership with VigLink. [49]

In June, VigLink unveiled a new link optimization solution as an optional upgrade to the VigLink Convert service. [11] [50] The update modified the original URL, redirecting users to a higher profit-margin retailer. [11] [50] [51]

Reddit announced that they would begin using VigLink to redirect affiliate links in June, 2016. [52] In February 2017, VigLink partnered with MSN to monetize its online content. [53]

In October 2019, Norton Safe Web blocked traffic redirected via Viglink and reported that the site contained identity threats. [54]

See also

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References

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  2. 1 2 Alexei Oreskovic (12 January 2010). "Google's Investment Arm to Grow Partner Ranks". Reuters. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Krystal Peak (13 December 2011). "Top 10 Ways to Monetize, Leverage Your Blog". VatorNews. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  4. 1 2 Brian Morrissey (17 November 2011). "Can In-Text Ads Entice More Publishers?". Digiday . Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 Patrick Hoge (11 March 2011). "VigLink Raises $5.4 Million". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  6. ↑ Oliver Roup (6 February 2012). "What's the Value of a Hyperlink? Try $58,000". MissyWard.com. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Mario (12 January 2012). "Oliver Roup - Founder and CEO of VigLink". IdeaMensch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Tony (21 February 2012). "Oliver Roup - VigLink 1 of 2". Founder LY. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  9. 1 2 Nancy F. Clark (18 February 2013). "Why is Google Ventures Investing in VigLink?". Forbes. Archived from the original on February 20, 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  10. ↑ Kent Bernhard Jr. (25 June 2013). "Three Funding Lessons From VigLink Founder Oliver Roup". Upstart Business Journal. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  11. 1 2 3 Anthony Ha (13 June 2013). "VigLink's Affiliate Links Get More Up-To-Date (And Lucrative) With a New Link Optimizer". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  12. 1 2 3 Leyl Master Black (9 February 2013). "4 Steps to Monetize Your Blog Through Affiliate Marketing". Mashable. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  13. ↑ Oliver Roup (19 May 2012). "Hyperlinks Are Dumb and Bleeding Money; How to Ensure Yours Aren't". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Kenneth Corbin (25 March 2013). "VigLink Builds Bridge Between Content and Ecommerce". eCommerce Bytes. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  15. ↑ Snurre (23 January 2013). "VigLink Review: Join Any Affiliate Program with Ease". Review Harbor. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  17. 1 2 Justin Lafferty (1 April 2013). "VigLink Generates Revenue for Facebook Page Owners Through Link Posts". AllFacebook. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  19. ↑ Rachel Swan (27 March 2013). "Haute Links: When Blogs Become Ads". SF Weekly. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  20. 1 2 Anthony Ha (12 January 2010). "With Google Backing, VigLink to Help Content Sites Make Money Off Links". VentureBeat. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  21. ↑ Thomas Claburn (12 January 2010). "VigLink Gets Google Backing". InformationWeek Security. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  22. ↑ Jason Kincaid (12 January 2010). "VigLink Raises $800K to Take Hassle Out of Affiliate Programs". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  23. 1 2 Liz Gannes (12 January 2010). "VigLink Finds a New Way to Make Blogging Pay" . Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  25. ↑ "Google-Backed VigLink to Launch Affiliate Links Scheme". ITProPortal. 13 January 2010. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  26. 1 2 Anthony Ha (2 August 2010). "Affiliate Link Startups Team Up: VigLink Acquires DrivingRevenue". VentureBeat. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  27. 1 2 Chris Crum (3 August 2010). "Google-Backed VigLink Acquires Driving Revenue". WebProNews. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  28. ↑ "Affiliate Marketing Company VigLink Acquires Rival DrivingRevenue". Marketing Pilgrim. 3 August 2010. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  41. 1 2 Matthew Schwartz (29 November 2011). "LinkWeaver Offers New Alternative for Publishers Looking to Monetize Their Websites". BtoB Media Business. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  42. ↑ Bambi Francisco Roizen (12 June 2012). "VigLink Integrates with vBulletin to Access 100k Forums". VatorNews. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  43. ↑ Murray Newlands (13 June 2012). "VigLink Wins vBulletin". Performance Marketing Insider. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  44. 1 2 Shawn Collins (16 June 2012). "vBulletin 5 Connect Integration with VigLink". Feed Front. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  46. ↑ Khanhumayun (22 October 2012). "Affiliate Platform VigLink Partners with GeoRiot to Enable Location-Based Referrals". Humayun Khan's Writing Portfolio. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  48. ↑ Clyde Smith (26 October 2012). "Worldwide iTunes Affiliate Links Via GeoRiot & Related Tools for Musicians". HyperBot. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  49. ↑ Frederic Lardinois (28 May 2013). "Blog Monetization Service Skyscraper Comes Out of Closed Beta, Adds VigLink Integration & Wordpress Plugin". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  50. 1 2 Shawn Collins (14 June 2013). "New Link Optimizer Technology from VigLink". Shawn Collins Consulting. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  51. ↑ Shawn Collins (15 June 2013). "New Link Optimizer Technology from VigLink". Feed Front. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  52. ↑ "Affiliate links on Reddit". 6 June 2016.
  53. ↑ Brown, Eileen. "MSN partners with VigLink to unlock new revenue streams from existing content | ZDNet". ZDNet. Retrieved 2018-06-11.
  54. ↑ "Report for viglink.com". Norton Safe Web. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
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