We’re a bit late in reporting on this news due to recent situation at the blog, but Russian online ad-management startup Garpun has obtained $3.5 million (2.67 million Euro) in a round of funding led by Moscow-based iTech Capital. We’re told that the funds will be directed towards product development and to add features for additional online marketing channels, such as real-time bidding (RTB). As part of the deal, Nikolay Davidov, Investment Director at iTech, will become a member of the board of directors at Garpun.
Recently, we’ve written a couple of stories (here and here) about rival DataMind’s entry into the Russian market. This new company, which came out of the Tinkoff Digital venture fund and which began as an initiative by multi-millionaire Oleg Tinkoff, is attempting to become an early winner in the potentially lucrative RTB market in Russia.
Real-time bidding is a process in which online ad-space is auctioned in real-time to advertising agencies. Advertisers have a profile for their ideal customer and can bid on the right to occupy the ad-space on a page which the person visits. Customers reveal themselves through their cookies and the demand-side platform (a company like DataMind) provides sends out a call as the user visits a site.
Garpun intends to position itself as an early rival Datamind, but Victoria Gracheva, PR Director at iTech, tells me that the service offered goes beyond RTB. On one hand, I’m told that Garpun is in the process of developing an RTB module which will compete directly with the service provided by DataMind. On the other, Gracheva tells me that, while Datamind is a demand-side platform (DSP), Garpun will offer a broader service and offers a tool for contextual and targeted advertisements. Only in RTB specifically will the two companies compete directly. Garpun states that its tool manages ad-campaigns from Google AdWords and locally-oriented Yandex.Direct, Yandex.Market, Begun, and VK.com. According to the company’s founder, Vasily Lazuka, Garpun’s advantage is in its knowledge of the local Russian market and that the the funds from iTech will aid his company in expanding globally.
We’ve previously covered iTech on a couple of occasions, when they acquired Moscow ticket-broker MDTZK for 12 million euro and when they spent 7.6 million euro to obtain a minority-stake in Russian SEO platform SEO Pult.
