Covario, Inc. (Formerly SEMDirector) Raises $16 Million B Round Led by FTVentures

Investment Will Fuel Expansion into Interactive Marketing
Analytics
LA JOLLA, Calif.--(Business Wire)--Covario, Inc., (formerly SEMDirector, Inc.) leader in interactive
marketing analytics, today announced in conjunction with its annual
event, INFLECTIONPoint, to be held January 24-25 in La Jolla, Calif.,
that FTVentures, a $1 billion venture fund specializing in
technologies offering meaningful solutions to the financial services
industry, has led a $16 million Series B investment in the company,
joining existing investors Dubilier & Company and Voyager Capital. The
funding will drive further growth for Covario's search automation
solutions and will advance the company's efforts in display and video
advertising markets. In a separate announcement, Eric Byunn, a partner
at FTVentures with investment responsibilities in software, has joined
the Covario board of directors, effective immediately.

"Covario is on the forefront of interactive marketing analytics,
providing proven technology solutions for complex, multi-site,
multi-geography enterprises, which is highly attractive to FTVentures'
Global Partner Network," said Byunn. "The company has done an
excellent job of integrating into the interactive marketing ecosystem
with a differentiated product offering, successfully positioning
itself to take advantage of this large and rapidly growing market."

Covario will continue to grow and maintain its leadership position
in search marketing automation, while expanding its scope to include
other forms of interactive marketing analytics, such as display
advertising, as well as new advertising mediums, including video and
mobile. FTVentures' investment in the company will provide Covario
with additional resources to pursue new partnerships, solutions and
markets. Specifically, the funds will be used to further build out
Covario's sales force in the U.S. and to begin penetrating
international markets. The investment will also enable the development
and marketing of new technologies and products for management,
monitoring and measurement of advertising in digital media - display,
mobile, video and social media.

"FTVentures brings a long-standing reputation and deep expertise
in both digital marketing and the financial services industry, and
this investment will help propel Covario to new markets, while
solidifying a brand leadership role in interactive marketing
analytics," said Russ Mann, chief executive officer at Covario. "Given
our focus and success in providing robust analytics solutions to large
Fortune 500 advertisers, FTVentures will be a key strategic partner
due to the firm's extensive global financial services industry
network."

Covario offers the Covario Marketing Action Platform(TM), a hosted
solution designed for large advertisers to efficiently manage complex
global search engine marketing campaigns. Covario Marketing Action
Platform automates the gathering of search engine, Web analytics and
other sales and marketing data to provide a consistent business view
of information that includes budget and purchase order allocations,
customer engagement and return on ad spend (ROAS). The platform offers
two core software solutions: Covario Paid Search Insight(TM) and
Covario Organic Search Insight(TM). Covario Paid Search Insight
provides search, digital and interactive media executives and managers
with a single environment for tracking and evaluating paid search
marketing performance. Covario Organic Insight enables large
enterprises to automate Web site auditing for effective compliance
with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. Both solutions
also deliver actionable information for global organizations to
evaluate, monitor and measure corporate and competitive online brand
presence across multiple Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for paid
and organic programs.

Other investors in Covario include leading Seattle-based venture
capital firm, Voyager Capital, and New York-based private investment
firm, Dubilier & Company. To learn more about Covario, please visit
www.covario.com.

About FTVentures

FTVentures provides growth capital to companies seeking to finance
organic expansion, recapitalizations, build-ups and buyouts. The firm
invests in business services and software companies that derive value
from its unmatched Global Partner Network, which includes 40 of the
world's leading financial institutions. FTVentures' Global Partner
Network provides the firm with a unique vantage point into the
business driven and operating challenges of the global enterprise.
Founded in 1998, FTVentures currently has over $1 billion under
management with offices in San Francisco and New York. For more
information, please visit www.ftventures.com.

About Covario, Inc.

Covario, Inc., formerly known as SEMDirector, is the leader in
interactive marketing analytics (IMA) software. The Covario portfolio
provides global organizations with robust interactive and search
marketing analytics solutions for display advertising, paid search
advertising and organic search engine optimization across the
enterprise and throughout the channel. Covario enables complex and
distributed organizations to control brand integrity, ensure budget
transparency and deliver quantifiable results across business units,
distribution channels and languages. Headquartered in San Diego,
Covario's growing customer list include some of the world's best known
brands in high tech manufacturing, financial services, electronics,
media & publishing and consumer packaged goods, such as Intel, Procter
& Gamble, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and AIG / AIU among others. For more
information on the Covario call 858.397.1500 or visit
http://www.covario.com.

JHG-Townsend for Covario, Inc.
Natasha Grach / Liya Sharif, +1-858-457-4888
ngrach@jhg.com
lsharif@jhg.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008