AVCJ

Gree Ventures backs Japan marketing start-up

  • Andrew Woodman
  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  
  • Save this article  

Japanese online marketing firm Somewrite has raised JPY100 million (about $1 million) from corporate venture capital arm Gree Ventures and other undisclosed investors.

This represents the start-up's first institutional round since it won the fifth batch of Incubate Fund's Incubate Camp earlier this year. According to a statement, the new funding will be used to bolster the company's management team, hire staff and expand marketing efforts.

Somewrite provides marketing services for "owned media" - defined as communication channels such as websites, blogs, or email - through content marketing, owned media distribution, and online advertising platform services.

The company's network platform - Somewrite Ad - picks up advertorial articles from media sites and distributes them to partner sites as a native ad. The platform includes a tracking engine that learns the preferences of users in real-time.

This is not the first VC investment in Japan's online advertising space. Earlier this year Voyage Ventures, Mizuho Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and strategic investor CA Mobile together invested JPY120 million in B2B ad platform Logly.

In July of last year, Nissay Capital invested $1.1 million in Dennoo, which provides a platform that analyzes the exact number of seconds a web-based ad is viewed.

  • LinkedIn  
  • Google plus  
  • Save this article  

More on North Asia

Latest News

world-hands-globe-climate-esg
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey

Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...

  • GPs