Stipple provides technology that layers identifying information onto photos, letting publishers and brands tag images with links to other media, product pages, or citations. Its product enables publishers, marketers and retailers to turn images into advertisements and micro‑storefronts, and publishers/developers earn affiliate and ad revenue as audiences interact with Stipple‑powered photos. The company reports rapid scale in image tagging — tagging 12 million images in one November month, more than 80 million by the end of the reported month, a current rate above 1 million images per day, and a goal of over 100 million accurately tagged images by year‑end. Hundreds of brands, including Nike, L’Oreal, Zappos and Nordstrom, use Stipple to tag tens of millions of images per month. Stipple also integrated with Twitter Cards to enable interactive, in‑stream experiences that let users view product info, videos and purchase links without leaving Twitter. The company emphasizes automated tagging and ownership/attribution controls that reconnect images to original owners and give publishers visibility into image usage. Stipple is an advertising startup that enables publishers to label and share people, places and things in images so those images can be monetized through commerce or advertising. The platform lets readers buy tagged items in photos and competes with companies like Luminate and ThingLink. Stipple says it has the largest corpus of tagged images on the web and is adding 1 million new images per month. It reports 4,000 active publishers and more than 3 billion monthly pageviews. The company plans to use the new funding to grow the team and improve product with a focus on mobile commerce. The next version of Stipple is scheduled to open to the public in mid-June. Stipple offers free tools to label, share and monetize pictures on the Web. Once a photo is labeled, Stipple connects labels to real-time information, advertising or product offers. The company recently launched a People Dots feature that enables labeling of people in any photo on the Web, not just those hosted on social networks. At launch it announced partnerships with Six Apart, JIVE Label Group, Atlantic Records and E.W. Scripps Company. Three months after launching, Stipple raised a $2 million seed round co-led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mike Maples' FLOODGATE. The company counts celebrity and angel investors among its backers.

Total raised

$10M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Dec 2012