US-based affiliate marketing platform Skimlinks, backed by Germany-based media company Bertelsmann’s corporate venturing unit, has completed a growth financing of undisclosed size led by venture capital firm Greylock Partners.
Greylock was joined in the round by Forum Foundry, a US-based online community builder, and two Japanese angel investors, Hiro Maeda and Ryota Matsuzaki. The investment will be used to fund international expansion, including the opening of a Japanese site.
The company, which links online publishers to affiliate retail sites, allowing them to increase their revenue, had raised more than $7.5m in two previous rounds. The company says that its network of 140,000 active publishers generates seven figure revenues every month and drives more than $500m in e-commerce sales annually.
Skimlinks received seed funding of around $1m in February 2009 from the UK-based National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) and venture capital funds The Accelerator Group and Sussex Place Ventures. In December 2009 it added a further $1.5m in growth funding from the same investors to expand into the US.
In 2011, the company secured $4.5m in a series B round led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and its original backers.