Keywee Raises $9 Million to Turn New York Times Stories Into Facebook Ads

The New York Times is likely to start publishing some of its stories on Facebook. But it also wants Facebook to send lots of eyeballs to stories on the Times’ own website.

Keywee says it can help: The Israeli startup says it can drive traffic from Facebook and other platforms by figuring out the best way to feature publishers’ content on those platforms, utilizing natural language processing and other cool tech.

Keywee is one of several “content marketing” startups that promise to help publishers and brands extend their reach digitally, and many of them have raised a lot of money recently. Keywee has joined their ranks with a $9.1 million A round led by Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Marker LLC, the Israeli VC firm that has been active in ad tech for a while. The Times, which is using Keywee, is also an investor.

At its most basic level, Keywee is one of many companies that will help advertisers buy space on Facebook and other platforms. For now, the company also buys ads on Reddit and Yahoo, and plans to add Twitter, LinkedIn and others this year.

But CEO Yaniv Makover says his company distinguishes itself by taking advertisers and publishers’ content, analyzing their text using software, and then turning it into “paid posts” designed to find a particular audience.

Right now Keywee makes most of its money based on the amount its customers spend on ads; Makover says the company is starting to roll out a subscription service to help automate content creation.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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