Freespee, which provides call tracking and pay-per-call solutions for the “lead generation industry”, has closed a second round of funding of 1.1 million euros.
The new investment comes from Finland’s Inventure and will be used to fuel growth across Europe. It follows previous funding in October 2009 to the tune of €800k also from the Finnish VC fund whose other investments include Whitevector, Conmio, Rightware and Thinglink.
Freespee, founded in 2008 by CEO Carl Holmquist and CTO Tobias Lindgren, offers turnkey solutions and an API for “call metrics, analytics and the management of phone leads”. Basically, it lets advertisers measure and analyse inbound phone call traffic from various sources in the realisation that online (and offline) ads often convert best when customers are prompted to follow up via a phone call. With the insight that Freespee’s technology can provide, the pitch is that advertisers can make better decisions on how to optimise their ad spend “across both online and offline channels, and buy advertising according to Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) and Cost-Per-Action (CPA) basis”.
Along with further funding, Freespee has announced that it’s bagged a new customer: European Directories (EDSA), a local search and lead generation company, has become a client across a number of European countries. Freespee’s existing partners include Nordic media companies Sanoma, Schibsted (Blocket.se) and Eniro, as well as Germany’s markt.gruppe, and the UK’s 5PM.co.uk and customer acquisition platform dianomi.
Freespee has offices in Uppsala, Helsinki and Copenhagen and has broken out of its Nordic roots to serve 7,000 local area codes in 13 European countries. The company employs 16 people.