San Francisco-based Andromedia Inc., a supplier of Web
marketing software, said it has secured $15 million in strategic equity
financing.
The new round of financing was led by XL Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Big
Flower Holdings Inc. Big Flower, with revenues of $1.8 billion, is an
advertising and marketing services company based in New York City. Kristopher
A. Wood, a managing director of XL Ventures Inc., has been named to the
Andromedia board of directors,
Additional new investors include: IDG Ventures, the venture capital arm of
International Data Group (IDG); investment bank C.E. Unterberg, Towbin; Ares
Management LP, a private investment fund based in Los Angeles; and ABS
Employee Ventures (affiliated with BT Alex. Brown).
In addition, all of Andromedia’s existing institutional investors participated
in this latest round, including Travelers Insurance, UBS Capital, Westbury
Capital Partners, and Sippl MacDonald Ventures. This brings the total outside
investment in Andromedia to $30.7 million since the company’s founding in late
1995.
Andromedia said the funds will be used to accelerate its Web site activity
analysis and personalization businesses by growing the company’s field sales
and service organization, stepping up marketing activities and investing
heavily in technology and product
development.
Separately, the company unveiled its Smart eMarketing Platform of products and
initiatives. Andromedia’s Smart eMarketing Platform combines LikeMinds
Personalization Server with ARIA Web site analysis software.
Andromedia announced four new products, a strategic relationship with
BroadVision, support for the Information and Content Exchange (ICE) protocol,
and partnerships with several e-commerce platform vendors.
New products include ARIA 3.0 and ARIA Enterprise 3.0, as well as ARIA
eCommerce 3.0, an online shopping analysis solution that integrates with
third-party e-commerce
platforms to report on actual customer shopping behavior in real-time. Also
new is LikeMinds Personalization Server 2.2.
Meanwhile, ATG, Vignette, BroadVision, Allaire and Netscape announced support
for Andromedia to provide “high-value” data analysis to their customers.