Profitero, the leading SaaS provider of online insights and eCommerce intelligence for retailers and brands, today announced it has received $8 million in financing from the top tier US venture capital firm Polaris Partners. Profitero will use the funds to double its already 40-strong engineering team and aggressively expand its presence in North America and worldwide. Profitero also named Irfan Salim, former CEO of MarkMonitor - a global leader in online brand protection - to its Board of Directors.

'The Profitero vision is to become the Nielsen of the online world for global retailers and brands', said Irfan Salim, whose previous company MarkMonitor (also Polaris-backed) was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2012. 'They are solving a very real need, particularly for global brands, and they are solving it with a highly scalable technology platform as opposed to another people-intensive manual solution'.

Profitero already counts Staples, Sam's Club, Waitrose and Ocado among its fifty-plus global customer base, monitoring over 220 million prices in near real-time. Via its intuitive web-interface, Profitero provides visibility into the online sales channel including: product data quality monitoring, share of online shelf, share of voice, pricing, brand price monitoring and new product monitoring.

Whilst eCommerce is still only a small percentage of total sales for most global brands, it is the fastest-growing channel, with revenues typically increasing by more than 30% year-on-year. As such, it is the most significant channel for global consumer brands. The increasing influence of the online channel is highlighted in figures from research firm Forrester which suggest that web-influenced retail sales will reach $1.8 trillion by 2017.

'We are excited to partner with Polaris as we look to continue growing our business by 300% year-on-year and to build out our North American business,' said Vol Pigrukh, Co-Founder and CEO of Profitero. Commenting on the appointment of Irfan Salim to Board of the company, Vol noted, 'MarkMonitor and Profitero have very similar business models and Irfan's input and guidance will be highly valuable for Profitero to ensure we deliver the best service to both our US and global customers.'

'Profitero has many unfair advantages over its competition, not least of which is its web data collection and product matching capabilities which are easily scalable to all product categories and applicable for all geographies and languages,' said Noel Ruane, venture partner of Polaris. 'Their best in-class technology, combined with an intuitive easy-to-use web interface, gives brands and retailers both immediate and enduring value.'

About Profitero
Profitero is the leading global provider of online insights and eCommerce intelligence for retailers and brands, offering the largest reach and scale of online data collection in the industry. We provide both brick & mortar and online retailers with their competitors' prices, promotions and full product assortment information.

More than 50 global retailers, including Sam's Club, Staples, Waitrose, Worten and Ocado, rely on Profitero's accurate and timely competitor intelligence to make better informed and more profitable pricing decisions, helping them to increase sales as well as margins.

Profitero also supplies brands with critical online insights, helping to enhance their online sales and market positioning. We deliver key online metrics, including share of online shelf, share of voice, pricing, brand price monitoring and new product monitoring, in any country and from any online or multichannel retailer, updated every day.