Wednesday, January 28, 2009

WordStream hunts down $4M from Sigma Partners

By Galen Moore

Sigma Partners has invested $4 million in a Series A venture round for WordStream Inc., a Somerville search marketing company that provides advertisers with databases of search terms to bid against.

Paul Flanagan, managing director at Sigma Partners, will take a board seat at WordStream. The company last September appointed Rob Adler, co-founder and former president of the online financial services company Corporate Communications Broadcast Network Inc. (CCBN), as CEO.

“Our software helps all advertisers be more relevant for the searcher by helping them discover the long tail of keywords that they can logically bid against,” Adler said of WordStream’s product. The software begins with an analysis of all keywords used to find an advertiser’s site, he said. Those keywords are put into a database with a user-interface that allows the advertiser to organize the database for targeted campaigns. For example, a pet store might organize keywords by kind of pet, and then by type of solution, such as foods or accessories, he said.

CCBN was sold to Thomson Reuters Corp. (NYSE: TRI) in 2004. Financial terms were not disclosed at the time, but Adler on Monday valued the deal at about $200 million.

WordStream, which has been in private beta since the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2008, has 15 employees, Adler said. The company’s product launched out of private beta today, WordStream announced. Adler said some customers who participated in the beta program will continue using the product.

The company plans to hire new employees in marketing, sales, engineering and client services, Adler said.