Social news innovator
announced a $16.2 million Series D funding round this morning, led by German media giant Axel Springer.
The online media company, from the co-founders of Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post, distributes its unique brand of content, video overlaid with text, exclusively through social channels.
The funds raised will be used to aggressively grow the team of just under 50 employees in both the engineering and editorial departments, as well as assist in expansion to international markets. “Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have massive audiences outside the US and we want to cater to those users and bring the content we already create to new markets, in their native languages,” said Athan Stephanopoulos, SVP of partnerships and strategy for NowThis.
People are increasingly getting their news from Facebook
The New York-based startup’s video clips have seen explosive growth over the past 12 months, growing from 70 million to 700 million monthly viewers. The videos are particularly popular on Facebook, where NowThis is one of the top five content publishers and the largest publisher of news content on the social network.
NowThis distributes content across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Kik and Tumblr and the video content is regularly used by TV stations around the globe. NowThis already has a team dedicated to creating content for the Chinese market, which is distributed via Weibo.
The company, originally called NowThisNews, has rebranded as it expanded into other verticals. In the past year, it launched NowThis Entertainment, NowThis Future (science and tech) and NowThisWeed and is expanding again with NowThis Election as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up.
Stephanopoulos (pictured left) attributes the success to three factors: the content is developed and curated specifically for each social platform, the data and insights team provides real-time feedback on which content works and the NowThis proprietary technology allows a small team to create a lot of content. The team of less than 50 produces more than 60 videos per day.
Such has been the growth of NowThis on Facebook that the company decided to abandon its desktop website at the start of 2015. “We’re going to bring content to wherever our users live,” said Stephanopoulos. “Video will be the dominant content type. They will find it on a social feed and they will consume it on a mobile device.”
The content is especially appealing to younger news consumers — 74 percent of NowThis’ audience are less than 34 years old.
NowThis chairman and co-founder Ken Lerer is also chairman of Buzzfeed and founded the company with VC partner and fellow former Huffington Post executive Eric Hippeau in 2012. Before today the company had raised a combined $19 million, including a previous $6 million from Axel Springer. The German media giant continues to strengthen its presence in the U.S. following the recent investment in
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