Networked Insights, a Madison, Wisconsin-based social media analytics company, has just announced a $5 million Series A funding round led by Kegonsa Capital Partners.
Which confuses me, because according to its CrunchBase profile, the startup had already raised $4 million in Series A financing from the same investor back in 2007, based on this article on the Wisconsin Technology Network.
Either way, the market research company has now raised $9 million to date, a considerable amount of money for a company operating in a space increasingly littered with startups and established audience measurement companies alike, all vying for a piece of the same pie.
The company says it will use the funds to bolster its SocialSense platform, which it refers to as a tool for “social media listening”, and launch new product offerings based on the product’s architecture. SocialSense provides a segmented look at the conversations and interactions happening online, which sounds pretty much like the boiler plate for any social media analytics provider out there (and there are plenty).
Networked Insights claims it’s able to mine data from 300 million people and 1.5 billion online conversations on a monthly basis – data that enables marketers to harness insights and streamline research for future advertising campaigns. The company recently signed up IDG as a customer, and also cites P&G, Kraft, Fox, McDonalds, Walgreens and Cisco as some of the brands that they’re partnering with.
Time will tell if they’ll be able to stand their ground in an increasingly competitive market.