Australian Performance PR platform Linkby has today announced that it has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Volition Capital, a Boston-based growth equity firm making its first Australian investment.
Linkby uses premium editorial to aid consumer brands drive growth. It connects advertisers with over 600 publishers, which includes Mediaweek Australia. The company has a focus on content-driven campaigns with measurable results for its clients.
It boasts a client base of more than 3800 consumer brands, including Charlotte Tilbury, Beyond Meat, Skechers, Free People, Skyscanner, T-Mobile, and Lululemon. These clients are serviced by teams in the US, UK, and Australia.
In a conversation with Mediaweek, CEO & co-founder Chris Wirasinha spoke about the growth of the business in North America.
“55% of Linkby’s revenue currently comes from the US market and it’s been growing by as much as 100% YOY in recent months. There’s a team on the ground across the US and Canada and we’ll be doubling it to more than 40 people in the coming months. We currently have an office in New York which is the HQ of our US operations,” Wirasinha said.
To help facilitate this growth, Linkby co-founder and CRO Adrian Fagerlund will relocate to New York.
Linkby co-founders Chris Wirasinha, Andrew Chak, and Adrian Fagerlund.
The investment in Linkby by Volition Capital has been earmarked to grow the US go-to-market team and accelerate product development. The company reports that the roadmap includes features to help advertisers identify the best publisher partners, streamline campaign setup, and allocate budgets toward outcomes like conversions, awareness, or traffic.
“The funding will see Linkby also grow our local Australian engineering and product teams which will help to build out the next phase of Linkby’s Performance PR recommendation engine,” Wirasinha said.
Wirasinha told Mediaweek that Performance PR is more mature in the US market than it is locally, but “we’ve found that everywhere we go in the world the need to make PR outcomes more measurable and performance focused has resonated strongly. Linkby continues to see wide adoption amongst forward thinking PR agencies who see Linkby as a new tool in their tool belt that gives their clients more control over their coverage”.
AI is a key consideration of the business, as it is with most companies now. The team at Linkby report that the investment will empower it to be at the forefront of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and emerge as a leader in the next era of search.
“Taking the millions of datapoints we’ve collected from working with over 3,800 brands, 600 publishers and creating over 42,000 features which we’ll then feed into a machine learning model powered by AI to help our brands create the most effective campaigns possible,” Wirasinha said.
Prior to co-founding Linkby, Wirasinha previously co-founded high-profile Australian media brand Pedestrian.tv. In 2018, the business was acquired by Nine Entertainment.