Placester, the real estate advertising network, today announced a $5.5M Series A financing round led by Romulus Capital, which also led the company's seed round, with additional participation from existing investors Dave Anderson (Kiva, Silverpop), Josh Summers (Clypd, Where.com), David Cohen (Founder of Techstars), Adam Berrey (Curoverse, Brightcove, Allaire) and Angel Street Capital. With this round, Placester also announced a new product for local media companies with a nationwide deal with Hearst Corporation. The end-to-end, white-labeled consumer real estate portal combines listing data, powerful free-text search technology and a native advertising platform designed for the needs of the industry.

Together with its website product for real estate agents, Placester is realizing its long-term vision of connecting local publishers to the world's real estate professionals. These publishers have long been out of reach to most real estate professionals due to market fragmentation and antiquated advertising choices. For publishers, this represents a fresh opportunity to garner more of the enormous digital advertising investment made each year by real estate professionals, estimated to reach $14.5B by 2017.

'Real estate is one of the largest online ad categories and, as our network of real estate professionals has grown to nearly 100,000, we've proven that a straightforward way to market one's self is essential. Professionals can reach buyers through local advertising yet the publishers' lack of available systems has made it difficult to deliver the digital ad products that today's professionals seek,' said Matthew Barba, Co-founder and CEO, Placester. 'By delivering our technology to networks of local publishers like Hearst, publishers are able to offer the right ad products to the right people within a sophisticated portal. We're thrilled to be working with the tremendously innovative Hearst team as they've been industry leaders in the transition to digital and the implementation of native advertising. For many publishers, we're bringing their real estate sections into the 21st century, which provides them with new revenue opportunities.'

For publishers, Placester's platform seamlessly transforms existing digital real estate sections, optimizing revenue via a single solution to manage consumer search, real estate inventory information and associated ad products. Hearst's nationwide-network of local newspapers, such as The Connecticut Post, are the first to adopt Placester's platform in place of legacy real estate sections. Through this partnership, Placester unlocks new advertising opportunities for Hearst's existing and future advertising.

'When we first invested in Placester, we all knew that the solution they were offering to real estate professionals at scale had important implications for other industry stakeholders like local media companies and hyperlocal publishers. These publishers have seen their real estate ad business cannibalized by emerging digital platforms in the last decade and seek a partner for real change. We love giving market players the technology to disrupt their own massive traditional industries. It's exciting to be a further part of Placester's growth as they bring their technology to publishers in addition to real estate agents,' said Krishna K. Gupta, Founder and General Partner, Romulus Capital.

With today's investment, Placester has raised a total of $8M in total funding.

About Placester

Placester, the real estate advertising network, partners with leading publishers to quickly and effortlessly deliver secure digital ad products that today's agents and brokers desire within a user experience that is optimized to increase consumer engagement and conversion.