New York, NY - March 23, 2009 — Performance enhancing, online advertising technology company Linkstorm today announced the completion of a funding round of just over $2.8 million from several new and repeat Angel investors. Among the new investors are Rick Braddock, former president and chief operating officer of Citicorp and its principal subsidiary, Citibank N.A., and subsequently CEO of Medco, Priceline.com and currently FreshDirect.com, and Donn Rappaport, Co-Founder and CEO of American List Counsel (ALC) and the 2008 Chairman of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).
"Linkstorm continues to attract marketing visionaries as investors, board members and employees," said Ari Brandt, CEO, who himself joined Linkstorm recently from Condé Nast Digital, Yahoo!, Doubleclick and SmartMoney.com, and who last week announced the hiring of Lou Tosto as SVP of Sales & Operations. Mr. Tosto had been VP of Sales for Business Week and BusinessWeek.com, and was previously General Manager of SmartMoney.com. "Our recruiting efforts are succeeding for the same reason that advertisers, agencies and publishers are ramping up their activity with us: that in this challenging economy, our message of restoring the ROI for Display Advertising is resonating with all players."
"What I find compelling about Linkstorm," said new investor Rick Braddock, "is that it makes advertising customer-centric for the first time. Instead of pushing messages at the customer, even as assisted by the various targeting techniques that are popular today, Linkstorm enables the customer to choose their own pathways to the products, transactions and marketing messages that answer their own needs."
"In simple terms," added Donn Rappaport, "Linkstorm converts on-line display advertising from a passive, one-way medium to a truly interactive, highly participatory form of engagement that not only results in better conversion rates, but also produces a wealth of critical data marketers can employ for continuous improvement of their advertising efforts."
Commenting on the funding, David Sidman, Linkstorm Founder and Chairman, said: "The fact that we were able to raise $2.8 million from both new and repeat investors in the midst of this economic crisis is a tribute to the power of Linkstorm's value proposition, its well-documented performance track record, and most especially, its new team."
The Series D funds will be used to expand the company's sales force and to continue building out the platform's features and serving infrastructure.
Linkstorm is an advertising technology company that is pioneering a new approach to online marketing, e-commerce, publishing and social networking. The company's unique ad enhancement technology significantly improves performance of all online advertising and enhances customer engagement by overlaying cascading menus onto any ad format and quickly connecting customers to the information they want. Clients include national and global advertisers, agencies and publishers such as Cisco, E*Trade, American Express, Wal-Mart, Nissan, IBM, Microsoft, Ogilvy, Razorfish, Grey, Digitas, MRM, AOL, Meredith and the New York Times. Linkstorm is headquartered in New York City and is funded by visionary investors such as and Jim Rutt. For more information, please visit www.linkstorm.net or click .