TechNews

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In its earlier days, the company had built out the ability to serve promotions and ads inside a chatbot experience, which it licensed to a larger customer in the U.S.

The idea was that the existing chatbot platforms that had been built at the time were originally created for other purposes, like customer service, and didn’t really meet the needs of publishers.

Meanwhile, publishers were telling Direqt they wanted a direct relationship with readers, rather than having to rely on the ever-changing whims of Big Tech companies, like Meta and Google, which have been distancing themselves from the news business in recent years.

“There’s market data that suggests performance in chat is significantly higher to the order of 10% and 10x, depending on which source you’re looking at, that in-chat ads outperform traditional advertising,” Martin notes.

The team has now raised its first round of capital, a seed round of $4.5 million from investors including various entrepreneurs and executives, including Todd Parker, former Global Head of Business Development for Business Messaging at Google; NFL Hall of Famer Dan Marino; Peter Callahan, Former CEO of American Media; Ron Antevy, Founder & CEO e-Builder; and Dave Walsh, Partner at Kayne Anderson.

The Seattle-headquartered company aims to improve the core conversational engine it offers, increasing its monetization capabilities and unlocking more distribution with the new funds, as well.

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