Startup Focus: Imonomy

This week we caught up with Oren Dror and Amit Halawa-Alon, the founders of Imonomy, a successful In-Image platform. The founders spoke to us about how their venture began, their biggest successes and challenges and their plans for the future.

What does Imonomy do and why was it Started?

We’re an In-Image platform that monetises web & mobiles sites by placing ads on the most engaged areas of websites, the editorial images. We founded Imonomy in 2012 after working together to build a semantic engine at Yedda, a startup (read more about startups) acquired by AOL.

At Yedda we gained a great deal of insight into user behaviour and the power of images to connect online audiences in meaningful and engaging ways.
As a result, we wanted to build a platform that utilises the powerful impact of images to both engage users and generate revenues for publishers. Today, we count major premium publishers such as The Independent, The Evening Standard, and 247Sports among our clients.
We can’t talk about our business without mentioning the technology behind it. This is what our technology does: Our platform scans webpages for images and then dynamically places ads with a focus on maximising ad viewability.
The algorithm we’ve built over the past few years combines contextual and Big Data analysis to ensure that every ad we serve is relevant for each specific user. Finally, we leverage programmatic selling methods such as real-time bidding (RTB) and header bidding to maximise CPMs (cost per million impressions) for our clients.

Challenges and Successes

One of our greatest challenges thus far has been combining major digital advertising trends, such as video ads and content recommendation, with the In-Image concept. We’ve only recently found a way to implement these trends with the In-Image concept. In fact, we are about to launch a unique set of solutions that will give publishers a double win: new highly engaging ad formats combined with highly engaging ad locations. One will amplify the power of the other.
Our two biggest successes have been helping publishers around the world grow their businesses and engage their users. We’ve found that by utilising our platform, publishers will generally grow their incomes by about 15%-20% within a few months. On the engagement front, our In-Image ads increase CTRs (click through rates) by 1.3%-2.5%.

imonomy-founders
Imonomy’s Founders: Oren Dror and Amit Halawa-Alon

 

What are your growth plans and where will you be in 5 years?

Images are in our company’s DNA and this is where we see the biggest potential for growth. We are currently building additional tools and technologies to help publishers get the most out of their images. Within the next few months we will have a variety of new advertising products in the In-Image space, new image optimisation tools to enhance user engagement, and new technologies for revenue optimisation. In 5 years from now our vision is to generate real value from every image across the web.