• VentureBeat, Monday, July 19, 2010 12:24 PM

Pixazza, which adds live product links to static online images, has raised $12 million in a second round of financing led by Shasta Ventures. Also participating were existing investors, including Google's new venture arm. "The funding will fuel a new self-serve product that will make easy for smaller publishers to enhance their sites with Pixazza's technology," writes VentureBeat.

The Mountain View-based startup apparently uses human taggers to identify products and link them to shopping sites like Amazon or Zappos. "There are over three trillion images on the web and no one has done anything with them for 15 years," said Pixazza chief technology officer James Everingham. The company earns revenue through all of the existing online advertising models, including cost per 1000 impressions, cost per click and affiliate revenue, where it earns a cut of every sale it drives. Along with the fashion vertical, Pixazza had branched out into home furnishings and travel, and now attracts 25 million unique visitors per month and eight billion image views per year.

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