Ontogenix raises funding from GrowthWorks

Ontogenix, based in Toronto, has been developing its patent pending social media ad serving technology for the last 3 years. Things are looking up, earlier today we heard Ontogenix landed a substantial round from venture capital fund GrowthWorks and strategic investor Pareto Corp (TSE: PTO).

The company was founded in 2005 by Amit Kanigsberg (former Pareto CTO), Josh Mozersky (Queen’s University Professor of Logic), and Daniel Veidlinger (California State University Professor of Linguistics). As part of the funding round, Ontogenix is bringing on serial tech entrepreneur Chetan Mathur as Chairman and industry expert Marc Ruxin (SVP Digital Strategy & Innovation for McCann Worldgroup in San Francisco) as a board member.

Ontogenix is raising the round to go to market with their first product, an Interest Correlation Engine. The technology is designed to increase the relevance of ads presented on social media sites (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, etc.) by targeting users based on their individual interests. The company searches for information on the general public’s interests, attitudes, and opinions on hundreds of publicly available sources such as social networks, blogs, and forums. This information, collected in aggregate to preserve user privacy, is then combined with the company?s proprietary data model to form the basis for a predictive engine that can tell advertisers which ads will have high relevance to different types of users.

A number of companies are gunning for this market including Lookery and Lotame. In pilot tests, Ontogenix was able to increase click through rates by 400%. With Google publicly expressing remorse for the $900M guaranteed ad deal with MySpace and Facebook being lambasted for their Beacon program, it is high time someone figured out a better way to serve ads on social networks; we’re hoping it’s a Canadian startup.