Funds for Content Prediction Firm Visual Revenue

New York-based predictive analytics provider Visual Revenue has secured $1.7m in funding, which it will use to 'aggressively' expand its existing team.

Visual Revenue says its system can predict the performance of a piece of editorial content about 15 minutes into the future, and provides real-time recommendations to publication editors on what stories to promote where, and how long to feature them on their home page.

The firm was launched a year ago by two former IndexTools (now Yahoo! Web Analytics) employees, Dennis Mortensen and Charlie Holbech, with support from a team of industry veterans from the web analytics, machine learning and predictive modeling sectors.

Last year, their company secured $512k in funding from a group of corporate and angel investors. The latest funding has been led by IA Ventures and Softbank, and is supported by current shareholders.

IA Ventures Managing Partner Roger Ehrenberg comments: 'Visual Revenue sits at the intersection of real-time data, semantic analysis and web optimization, and seamlessly delivers this ROI-based solution to publishers both large and small. Dennis and his team are executing on an ambitious and exciting business plan, arming publishers with the tools to best monetize their inventory while delivering a top quality product to their readers.'

Web site: www.visualrevenue.com .