Two year-old company PageFair has raised $400,000 of equity funding through a round aimed at building out in the US.
Tribal Ventures, based in the US, and Frontline Ventures are being joined by government agency Enterprise Ireland in the transaction.
PageFair has developed a technology centred on monitoring and counteracting adblocking online. The process of adblocking involves customising web browsers with plugin software to remove all advertising seen on a web page.
With statistics showing that 20 per cent of visitors are using it on sites where it works, preventing websites from making money, PageFair is providing tools needed to reverse the process.
Sean Blanchfield, chief executive and one part of the founding trio behind PageFair, says, ‘This round funds us to establish ourselves in the US clusters where our publisher partners are based, where we will build a lasting and valuable solution for them.’
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The investment round is the first to be closed by the business having been bootstrapped since its foundation in 2012. Some 1,000 publishers are now using its online analytics and advertising service.
Prior to setting up PageFair, Blanchfield saw his DemonWare company acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2007. His founding partners Brian McDonnell and Neil O’Conner have joined forces before at Jolt – a business bought by GameStop in 2011.
According to Tribal Ventures partner Conor Stanley, PageFair has achieved the kind of ‘rapid international traction’ which is normally secured by start-ups solving what he describes as a ‘critical and expensive’ problem.
‘At their current pace of 50 publisher sign-ups weekly, PageFair will have relationships with a significant portion of the market by year end,’ Frontline Ventures partner Will Prendergast adds.
