It's one of the most natural habits when online — hitting the back button or clicking over to Google. But the Web services company Apture wants to help publishers avoid that "flight to Google" ……
….by providing tools that can keep Internet visitors on a site longer. In fact, Apture CEO Tristan Harris told me at the Brightcove Alliance event in San Francisco in September that Apture's plug-ins are adding about five to ten minutes to any given page view on its publisher partners.
Apture offers a plug-in for publishers and bloggers to enhance their posts with videos, images, Wikipedia entries, maps and other content that readers might otherwise use a search engine to find. Once a viewer leaves a site even to look up more information, he or she is less apt to return.
"As a publisher how do you compete with the infinite depth the Web is offering?" Harris asked. "Our software makes a miniature window bloom in the page and there you can see the Wikipedia article."
That's helped Apture partners like the New York Times, Washington Post and Financial Times keep viewers on their pages longer, in turn giving them more ad sales opportunities.
Apture makes money via a revenue share of ad dollars generated from the additional time spent on a page or site. The company has raised $3.5 million in venture funding, lead by Clearstone Venture Partners.
Daisy Whitney, Senior Producer
