June 27th, Novi Sad, Serbia Editorial Intelligence Start-up Content Insights raised a pre-scale seed round lead by South Central Ventures and followed by existing investors North Base Media and Neveq. The Company Content Insights will continue to deliver unique solution to editorial teams across the globe and use this investment to strengthen the team in Serbia, scale up marketing efforts and fuel the growth to reach profitability.
Content Editorial Reinvented
Content performance is a hot issue in the media and advertising industry struggling to know what works, and what doesn’t work without a universal benchmark. That is where Content Insights enters the market with Content Performance Indicator (CPI), a proprietary algorithm that provides clear assessment of content success and attributes it back to each writer, topic, section, and referrer.
The content marketing and advertising market is predicted to reach $319 billion by 2019 and being able to recognize whether a piece of content engaged and created a loyal audience will play a big part in publishing, native advertising, programmatic and content recommendation markets.
Content Insights was founded in April 2014 and the team launched the content intelligence suite “Content Insights” in June 2016. Today, newsrooms from all over the world are using Content Insights to be more efficient and productive. Some of the clients are Ringier Axel Springer, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Diario Noticias, Clarin, South China Morning Post, Daily Mail Group, De Persgroep, and many more. For their solution Content Insights in 2017 received the “Innovation of the year award” for newsrooms by FIPP Innovation World Report part of universal recognition from their clients and the industry.
The Team
Content Insights started as “painkiller” idea. CEO and founder, Dejan Nikolic, had an editorial problem which he couldn’t solve by tools available on the market, so he created the first version of Content Performance Indicator. Later joined by two co-founders Ilija Susa and Dragutin Miletic, Content Insights now counts 34 employees stationed around the globe with offices in Novi Sad, Sofia and Prague. The team has a deep background knowledge of the industry and employs some of the best talents in tech and data science but also journalism and editing.
The Partnership
We expect the raised funds to help us scale sales and marketing efforts, especially in our drive to the US market which we expect to fully “hit” in Q3/Q4 this year. The experience of the SCV partners and their network will be utilized to the same goals and we are thrilled to be able to work with such talented and committed partners. Content Insights is known for choosing investors not just for the funds but by what they can contribute to our business. Our investors so far are former managing editor of Wall Street Journal, former executive editor of The Washington Post, COO of Reuters-Thompson etc, said Dejan Nikolic, Founder & CEO of Content Insights.
We are truly excited to be able to partner and contribute to further growth of Content Insights. The team has been able to build a scalable business around a unique and technologically superior product, which we believe will revolutionize the way journalists and content creator measure, monitor and monetize their content. I would say the company offers a “red pill” to the media landscape in which probably most of us feel increasingly over-newsed and under-informed, said Jan Kobler, Managing Partner at South Central Ventures.