Funds for Buyer / Seller Matching Platform Promoted

San Francisco-based eCommerce buyer and seller matching platform Promoted has raised $6m in a seed round of funding, which it will use to further develop its platform and hire additional engineers.

Founded by two former Pinterest ad engineers, Andrew Yates and Dan Hill, Promoted is designed to enable buyers to find what they want more easily on large marketplaces and eCommerce apps, and sellers to receive feedback on how their products appear in a search. Promoted says that most large marketplaces have separate teams for ads, merchandising, search and recommendations, and data is siloed: the company was formed to help unify data infrastructure that can measure and then optimize the complete marketplace business: search, feed, promotions, and ads combined.

New funding has been led by Y Combinator, with participation from Interlace Ventures, Vela Partners and several angel investors, bringing the total raised to date to $8m. Yates comments: 'Businesses in this economic climate need to hit profitability quickly and that means optimizing their app to increase revenue. Our unifying real-time streaming data and ML infrastructure makes that possible for large marketplaces, and we are excited about the support from Y Combinator and the rest of our investors who see the fast ROI we are bringing to these businesses'.

Web site: www.promoted.ai .