MUMBAI: Viral advertising platform Virurl announced the closing of a $1.2 million seed funding round and launch of its public beta.
The financing was led by Tice Capital LLC, a Dallas investment company focusing on the technology and media categories, and Los Angeles Syndicate of Technology.
The platform allows brands and media owners to instantly launch viral campaigns by incentivising Web users to share links with their friends.
MSNBC.com’s founding director Merrill Brownwill be joining Virurl as its chairman. Brown is a New York-based consultant and advisor. He has helped launch numerous early stage ventures and is advisor to various companies in the advertising, marketing and digital media fields.
Brown said, "Virurl users have already delivered more than 1.7 million clicks to media across the web while collecting over $20,000 in earnings for themselves. With our seed financing closed, we look forward to continuing our rapid growth while investing in tools to help give publishers, brands and entrepreneurs an opportunity to quickly syndicate their content on the Web."
Additionally, Virurl has also roped in diverdified media and entertainment company Indomitable Entertainment to help out in developing strategic partnerships and engaging customers and clients. As a result, the entertainment firm’s CEO Dominic Ianno will join the board while its digital media head Boyd Bishop will work closely with Virurl on its business development efforts.
Virurl CEO and co-founder Francisco Diaz-Mitoma said, “We know that people are social, and that the Web is social, so it makes sense that ads should be social as well. The holy grail for brand advertisers is having a piece of their content go viral -- it really is about peer-to-peer sharing and with Virurl, we‘ve created an online marketplace that makes that possible in under 60 seconds."
Indomitable Entertainment head of corporate development Mathew Guliner said, "We believe Virurl has a unique and effective vision for viral marketing that will significantly impact advertising and web analytics. In the past few years, we have seen how peer-to-peer sharing is vital for a brand‘s success in the marketplace, and as a result, we are firm believers that Virurl will ultimately alter the future of advertising both domestically and internationally."
Virurl was founded by Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, who also founded the social gaming company Titan Gaming (now Playsino), and web entrepreneur Tim Symington. It is an online marketplace that allows brands to create instant viral marketing and advertising campaigns on the web. The platform enables marketers to launch global viral campaigns by compensating Internet users to share videos, articles, music, promotional material and other media with their friends via digital formats such as email, or social networks.
Virurl launched their alpha version in late 2011 and currently serves more than 40,000 registered users enabling brands to leverage web users to begin the online social sharing process.
