Curalate Secures $3 Million in Series A Funding Led by NEA

Curalate Enables Brands, Publishers and Agencies Including Michaels, Campbell’s, Better Homes & Gardens and GroupM to Engage with Customers on Pinterest

PHILADELPHIA, January 17, 2013-- Curalate, the leading Pinterest analytics and marketing platform, has secured $3 million in Series A financing. The round was led by NEA with participation from First Round Capital and MentorTech Ventures. The round follows a $750,000 seed round from the same three institutional investors. As part of the funding, Patrick Chung, partner, NEA and Josh Kopelman, partner, First Round Capital join the Curalate board of directors.

Curalate enables brands to measure, monitor and grow brand engagement on visual social media sites such as Pinterest. The new funding will enable Curalate to expand product development and marketing, as well expand to platforms beyond Pinterest, such as Instagram, which will be announced in the coming weeks.

Curalate is the only platform that utilizes advanced image recognition algorithms to make sense of conversations on visual sites such as Pinterest. Hundreds of the world’s leading brands and agencies across multiple sectors, including consumer packaged goods, retail, publishing, luxury, automotive and media have turned to Curalate to help them cultivate more meaningful relationships with consumers and increase sales using visual social media sites. For example, Curalate created a promotion for Carnival Cruise Lines encouraging consumers to engage with compelling imagery related to dream cruise destinations. The promotion increased Pinterest referral traffic to Carnival by 700 percent and resulted in 18,000 email opt-ins.

“Images are becoming the new currency of social media. Online destinations like Pinterest, The Fancy, Tumblr and Instagram demonstrate consumers are fundamentally changing how they are interacting with brands,” said Apu Gupta, CEO and co-founder, Curalate. “While numerous tools exist to help brands understand conversations on more traditional social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook, emerging visual networks require a completely new approach. Curalate provides this new approach, with the only visual analytics and marketing platform for the visual web.”

“Brands are scrambling to leverage the rise of Pinterest and visual sites like it,” said Patrick Chung, Partner, NEA. “Curalate has quickly established a leadership position in this emerging market. Curalate's talented team, powerful technologies and fresh capital will enable Curalate to extend its lead."

Curalate recently published research revealing 48 percent of the most popular pins on Pinterest lead to expired pages on top retailers’ websites. Given that Pinterest is now the fourth largest traffic driver to ecommerce sites, this data points to an even bigger opportunity for brands to increase revenue via Pinterest once they better understand their most engaged visual content.

About Curalate

Headquartered in Philadelphia, Curalate is leading the pack in developing a new breed of marketing tools for the visual web, starting with Pinterest. Curalate offers the most comprehensive solution available for brands and agencies looking to measure, monitor, and grow brand engagement on today's socially curated sites. Curalate is backed by top tier venture capitalists including NEA and First Round Capital, and is in use by hundreds of brands and agencies including Michael Kors, Kraft Foods, Real Simple, Edelman Digital, and GroupM Next. For more information please visit: www.curalate.com.

Contact:
Media:
Traeger Communications
Jennefer Traeger, 720-988-6149
jtraeger@traegercommunications.com

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