Attributor provides a solution that continuously monitors the Web for copies of content and removes those that violate publishers’ anti-piracy policies. The company’s core product helps publishers stop piracy by locating and removing infringing copies. It closed a $3.2M financing round to advance its technology. Investors in the round include existing backers Sigma Partners, JAFCO Ventures and Selby Venture Partners. The new capital will be used to expand the company’s infrastructure and continue product development. Attributor plans to use these improvements to address the growing needs of book, newspaper and magazine publishers around the world. Attributor provides a service that ingests publishers’ content and scans the Web to identify copied material, report how much is copied, and show whether pages link back to the original. The system indexes text at scale (about 100 million pages per day, 15 billion pages total to date) and currently handles text matching; images are in beta and video matching was slated for beta the following year. The company highlights which copying sites are ad-supported and which ad networks drive revenue, enabling publishers to target remedies (from asking for links to pressuring ad networks). Attributor had been testing its enterprise product with Reuters and AP for roughly six months before the enterprise launch, and it demonstrated the product to publishers. Pricing for the enterprise service ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year; a limited self-serve product for smaller publishers and bloggers was planned at roughly $6–$7 per month. The company uses empirical studies (lyrics, recipes, and publisher posts) to quantify copying, linking rates, and ad support across the Web.

Total raised

$13M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jun 2010