The round was led by New Atlantic Ventures. Mike Gordon, co-founder of Limelight Networks, also participated and will be joining the board. Full release is below.

Image Space Media Receives $2.9 Million In First Round Financing from Leading Media Industry Investors
Funds Will Support Publisher Network Growth and Development of Leading Edge Technology

New York, NY, January 19, 2010—Image Space Media (www.imagespacemedia.com), the leading provider of in-image advertising for the Internet, has received $2.9 million in first-round financing led by New Atlantic Ventures (NAV). Michael Gordon, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Limelight Networks, Inc. (LLNW), will also join the Board of Directors.

“Publishers are constantly seeking effective methods for monetizing their site content. Image Space Media’s ad overlay platform provides a source for incremental revenue that doesn’t compete with other revenue sources,” said Jesse Chenard, CEO, who most recently co-founded leading online video advertising network, Tremor Media. “Given the huge numbers of images across the Internet, the potential for scale is just incredible.”

With more than 34 million unique visitors each month, Image Space Media places relevant ads on the lower fourth of 7.5 million images across the Internet and serves hundreds of millions of impressions per month.

"Site visitors consistently engage with site images and rarely view banners anymore. Image Space Media has identified a solution to banner blindness and is getting great performance from their ads,” said Scott Johnson, Managing Partner at NAV. "Publishers need incremental revenue now more than ever so we are extremely bullish on the Company’s prospects."

Publishers gain incremental revenue through relevant, precisely targeted ads. The transparent ads are user-controlled and only appear when the site visitor mouses over an image. "Image Space Media’s advanced platform is delivering outstanding results for an expanding group of publishers and advertisers and is poised for even more significant growth,” said Gordon. “Website images represent a significant untapped revenue opportunity for publishers and a new, high-engagement opportunity for advertisers."

About Image Space Media

posted by Thomson on The Design Mag

Image Space Media is the leading provider of in-image advertising for
the Internet.  Image Space Media reaches more than 32 million unique
users worldwide each month with its ad overlay solution. Image Space
Media superimposes relevant advertisements over more than 7 million
images across the Internet and serves hundreds of millions of
impressions per month. Image Space Media provides publishers with a
method for adding incremental revenue to their sites and advertisers
an additional pipeline to reach their customers. Founded in 2008 and
headquartered in New York, Image Space Media maximizes web
advertisement space without compromising content integrity. For more
information please visit www.imagespacemedia.com, follow
@imagespacemedia on Twitter.

About New Atlantic Ventures

Leigh Taylor Photography from yeeeeee

New Atlantic Ventures is a leading early-stage venture capital firm
targeting investments in technology companies in emerging mass
markets. Through its offices in Cambridge, MA and Reston, VA, NAV
targets companies in the Eastern United States, while also pursuing
select opportunities nationwide. The NAV portfolio includes
investments in Pontiflex, Stitcher, GateRocket, Mpowerplayer, TVU
Networks, Koofers, Secure Command and FashionPlaytes. For more
information, visit www.navfund.com.

Using PYF is quick and easy, with no registration required! Simply upload a picture of your meal, title it, tag it, and select a related category. If you don't have an image to upload, you can browse through other pictures (which are categorized by breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, desserts, and bizarre foods.) You can rate each image you see by clicking a 'disgusted' or 'happy' emoticon.

Visit Postyourfood.com today!

Stock.XCHNG (www.sxc.hu) is a free stock photo website that has a huge gallery of over 350,000 high-quality photographs from around the world. Users can browse the collection and are encouraged to share their photos and graphics with others. Whether you are looking for a wallpaper, in need of an illustration to liven up your latest post, or simply searching for inspiration, you will be able to find nearly everything on Stock.XCHNG.

Looking for Halloween-themed images? Try KaveWall!

Cutcaster (www.cutcaster.com) is a photo and vector illustration marketplace that lets you purchase royalty-free images for web publishing and design. Buyers register for free and then browse the library until they find the image that they want to purchase. Cutcaster offers several purchasing options including downloading comps, buying credits, and bidding. After registration, users can also submit their own graphics for free and set their sale prices.

Kave Wall (www.kavewall.com/stock) has an impressive collection of free stock photos, images, and textures for use on your website. Images are divided into categories like “holiday” and “office” and are all incredibly quick and easy download. Users are encouraged to share and edit any picture as long as they credit its original owner.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net (www.freedigitalphotos.net) allows users to download “genuinely free images” for corporate as well as personal use. No registration is required and the images are available for instant download. Users need only spend money if they choose to purchase the highest resolution files (typically used in print). FreeDigitalPhotos.net invites both amateur and professional photographers to share and sell their work and receive commission if other users choose to buy a higher-res version.

We hope this article provided you with some useful information about affordable online image galleries. If we’ve missed any photo sites that you’ve been using, let us know with a comment or email info@imagespacemedia.com so we can add it to this post!

Today as we are roll out with our new name as we continue to unveil improvements to our in-picture advertising service. In the next few weeks expect faster loading times on your ads, more keyword possibilities to derive more relevant ads, and better analytics and tools for publisher ads.

We value the partnerships we’ve made with publishers and you can count on the same service with new and improved service modifications. By the end of the year we hope to complete the Beta stage and fully release Image Space Media products. Stay tuned to hear more about how Image Space is growing and is changing the ways in which publishers derive income from online advertising.

Advancements in Image Space's Technology:

1) We have enhanced the speed at which the ads load on our publisher's pages.

2) We recently modified our blog categorization system, adding more keyword possibilities. This means that our ads have gotten more specific and relevant to your site. For example, whereas before a dessert blog using Image Space might have featured general ads for foods or dieting, the ads now might be for chocolate chip cookies. Because of this, our click-through rates have increased. However, this also means that our CPC rates have temporarily gone down as we begin the process of building up our collection of advertisers who provide these specific ads. This temporary decrease is a part of the process of making our ads more specific and giving you a higher click-through rate -- the CPC rates will catch up as we begin selling against the new detailed category list. We ask for your patience as we continue this process.

Organizational News:

1) We have recently teamed up with veteran team from the digital media industry who can help us enhance our ad partnerships and pipe in ads from reputable networks such as Google, Microsoft, etc. For our publishers, this is exciting news as these enhanced ad partnerships will speed up the process of increasing CPC rates.

2) We are still projected to exit Beta by the end of this year with an innovative and robust new product and better reporting tools and analytics behind each publishers' images. Since we are still in Beta, your feedback is very important to us, both so that we can improve Image Media Space's existing services and so that we can better identify needed areas for innovation.

Thank you again for using Image Space's technology!

Best,
The Image Space Media Team