VigLink

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]

VigLink
IndustryMarketing, Advertising
FoundedSan Francisco, USA (March 2009 (2009-03))
FounderOliver Roup, CEO
ProductsVigLink Convert, VigLink Insert, VigLink Anywhere
ServicesIn-text Advertising and Marketing

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 monetise 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

References
  1. Leena Rao (17 November 2011). "VigLink Debuts LinkWeaver to Help Publishers Monetize Outbound Clicks". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  2. Alexei Oreskovic (12 January 2010). "Google's Investment Arm to Grow Partner Ranks". Reuters. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  3. Krystal Peak (13 December 2011). "Top 10 Ways to Monetize, Leverage Your Blog". VatorNews. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  4. Brian Morrissey (17 November 2011). "Can In-Text Ads Entice More Publishers?". Digiday. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  5. 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. Mario (12 January 2012). "Oliver Roup - Founder and CEO of VigLink". IdeaMensch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  8. Tony (21 February 2012). "Oliver Roup - VigLink 1 of 2". Founder LY. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  9. Nancy F. Clark (18 February 2013). "Why is Google Ventures Investing in VigLink?". Forbes. 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.
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  12. Leyl Master Black (9 February 2013). "4 Steps to Monetize Your Blog Through Affiliate Marketing". Mashable. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  32. Wade Roush (3 August 2010). "VigLink Grabs Wheel at DrivingRevenue". Xconomy. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  33. Jason Kincaid (10 March 2011). "VigLink Raises Another $5.4 Million to Help Publishers Monetize Outbound Clicks". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  34. Wade Roush (11 March 2011). "VigLink Raises $5.4 Million". Xconomy. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
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  39. Brad McCarty (17 November 2011). "VigLink Launches LinkWeaver to Make In-Text Ads Less Annoying and More Focused". The Next Web. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  40. Tammy Wolf (17 November 2011). "VigLink Unveils LinkWeaver, Content Monetization Technology for Website Publishers". TMCnet.com. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  41. 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.
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  45. Murray Newlands (15 June 2012). "vBulletin Announces VigLink Integration with vB 5.0 at ForumCon". The Admin Zone. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  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.
  47. Simon Holland (October 2012). "VigLink Upgrades iTunes Affiliate Links". PerformanceIN. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  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. 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".
  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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