VigLink's content monetization solution connects potential consumers to products by hyperlinking particular keywords in a website's content.^[1][3][7][9]

The company's technology, VigLink Insert, scans a page for words that could be potentially profitable to the publisher of the page, and connects the keyword with a product from an affiliate program.^[3][4] The publisher is paid when a reader clicks a link contained in the content to buy or learn more about a service or product.^[3][7][12]

VigLink also offers an outbound analytics service for clients to understand where readers go when they leave their site.^[8][13][14]

VigLink's first service, called VigLink Convert, operates using a JavaScript library that customers install on their web site to identify and monetize all potential links to any of the 30,000 merchants working with VigLink.^{[8][12][14][15][16]}

The company also offers an NLP-powered link-insertion solution, VigLink Insert, to automatically insert links into a publisher's content without detracting from reader experience.^[14][16]

VigLink Anywhere is the startup's newest product.^[16][17] The Anywhere service is geared towards social media, allowing users to monetize links shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other channels.^[16][17]

Founding and early investors edit

Oliver Roup founded VigLink in 2009, after discovering that less than 50% of links to Amazon.com on the web were engaged in the affiliate program.^{[1][7][14][18][19]} The VigLink product was in market by January 2010.^[8]

The same month the product was released in market, VigLink received $800,000 in seed funding from First Round Capital and Google Ventures.^{[2][20][21][22][23][24]} Other investors included LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and VP for Products at LinkedIn, Deep Nishar.^{[14][20][23][25]}

Acquisitions and technological developments edit

In August 2010, VigLink announced it had acquired competitor company DrivingRevenue.com.^{[24][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]} The cofounder of DrivingRevenue, Raymond Lyle, became the president of VigLink.^[26][29][31] The acquisition brought over $100 million in transactions from merchandise to the company.^{[24][27][29][30][32]}

The startup closed a Series B funding round in March 2011.^{[5][33][34][35][36][37]} The $5.4 million round was led by Emergence Capital, with continued funding from Google Ventures and First Round Capital.^{[5][33][34][35][36][37]} Emergence Capital partner Kevin Spain also became a member of the VigLink board.^[34][35][37]

In November 2011, VigLink debuted the new LinkWeaver service.^{[1][38][39][40][41]} The new technology functioned to enhance VigLink's automated link affiliation by detecting merchant and product references within a website's content and linking them to relevant merchant pages.^{[38][39][40][41]} Contrary to alternative in-text methods, the LinkWeaver solution was designed to seek out direct merchant and product references and to avoid hyperlinking keywords to products unrelated to the website's content.^[39][40] In April, 2013, the company renamed its LinkWeaver product to VigLink Insert.

On June 12, 2012, the company announced it had integrated with vBulletin, granting VigLink access to 100,000 forum websites.^{[42][43][44][45]} VigLink also reported that it was processing over 500 million clicks every month.^[44]

The following October, VigLink announced a new partnership with iTunes and iOS App Store link optimization service, GeoRiot.^[46][47][48]

In May 2013, blog advertising company Skyscraper announced its partnership with VigLink.^[49]

In June, VigLink unveiled a new link optimization solution as an optional upgrade to the VigLink Convert service.^[11][50] The update modified the original URL, redirecting users to a higher profit-margin retailer.^[11][50][51]

Reddit announced that they would begin using VigLink to redirect affiliate links in June, 2016.^[52] In February 2017, VigLink partnered with MSN to monetize its online content.^[53]

In October 2019, Norton Safe Web blocked traffic redirected via Viglink and reported that the site contained identity threats.^[54]

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