Pigsback.com, the sixth most visited website in Ireland, proved highly popular with Hotbed’s investor pool, with 48 members opting to pile in.
The company, launched in the UK last year, offers its consumer members “opt in” special offers relating to their specified interest. It already has more than 300,000 active members in the UK and forecasts hitting 500,000 by year end and a million by the end of 2007.
Users of the site benefit from daily content updates on sites tailored to their interests, such as preferred brands, features, news, tips and competitions.
They receive “PiggyPoints” for participating in surveys which can be spent on advertisers’ offers.
It boasts an advertiser base of more than 300, which includes well-known brands such as Nokia, Vodafone, Nestle, Tetley, L’Oreal, Kellogs and Dell, and annual renewal rates top 90%.
The site also claims to have almost a third of the total Irish online display marketing spend, with companies lured by the promise of receptive consumers, quantitative and qualitative feedback.
The finance will support the company’s UK marketing drive as it aims to tie up a significant chunk of the market. Hotbed’s Russell Pope commented that the deal represents a great opportunity for investors keen to “take advantage of the shift of marketing spend from traditional to online media”.
The online display advertising market in Britain was said to be worth £336m last year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau against an Irish market valued at £6m
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2006