Retail marketing consultancy Connexity has bought Skimlinks, the UK-based developer of a publishing content monetisation platform, for an undisclosed sum allowing media group Bertelsmann to exit, it announced yesterday.
Skimlinks runs an online portal connecting e-commerce merchants to its editorial affiliates where they can place links to their products.
The platform connects 60,000 publishers to more than 48,000 merchants and will now be offered as part of Connexity’s retail marketing offering. Skimlinks’ publisher clients include Time, Vox Media and Condé Nast.
The deal comes after $24m in funding including a $16m series C round in 2015 led by Frog Capital and backed by Bertelsmann unit Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Silicon Valley Bank, Greycroft Partners, Sussex Place Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank
Bertelsmann had already contributed to a a $4.5m series B round for the company in 2011. Its earlier investors include the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts as well as Forum Foundry, Accelerator Group, Hiro Maeda and Ryota Matsuzaki.