Newscred to go beyond content marketing with new $42M fund

Newscred announced that it had successfully raised $42 million in additional funds. The company was established in 2008, which acted as a system for readers to rate an online story or publication's credibility.

The company also changed focus from licensing articles from reputable publications then to connecting brands to freelance writers and lately, it settled on assisting brands in finding content for their marketing goals.

These brands include Toyota, Cisco, Visa, and Pepsi. Newscred said that they are able to improve their content creation by 182 percent and their annual revenue run rate tripled in the previous year.

Newscred CEO Shafqat Islam confessed that the reason behind this improvement is Newscred's software, which brands use in order to manage and plan their content marketing campaigns. They can also use the software to go to the marketplace and look for content they need.

Their next plan is to develop their software making it the best planning tool for a brand's marketing plans including TV advertising. Although a brand will not be able to purchase TV ads from the software, it can make the planning and organizing of marketing goals and plans easier.

Islam remarked that the software's Editorial Calendar is now called a Marketing Calendar that allows a brand to monitor events in social media, websites, email and other channels.

It also comes with other tools that can help manage content-related tasks, collaboration and task management. Brands will also be to use analytics that will tell them the audience that are viewing and sharing their content. The software is also being developed in order to help marketers decide the best places to place their investments.

The CEO said that Newscred's content marketing background gives them a great advantage among other marketing software. He adds that their edge is the fact that all marketing efforts will need content as their driving force.

According to Tech Crunch, the company has already raised almost $90 million in funds. The latest round was led by FTV Capital and participants included past investors such as Mayfield Fund, Interwest Partners and FirstMark Capital.