• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 28, 2019

Contentsquare on Monday announced it has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by global investment firm Eurazeo.

The funding brings total investments in the company to $120 million since 2016. All previous investors in the company also participated in the round.

With the new capital, Contentsquare plans to increase research and development focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics.

“The AI is learning and already able to capture a signal within the content if it’s relevant,” said Jean-Marc Bellaiche, SVP strategy of marketing and partnerships at Contentsquare . “The AI is converted into insights.”

The funding also will help to expand business across the Americas, Europe, specifically Asia, the Middle East and Nordic regions.

Bellaiche said Contentsquare has been in the U.S. for about two years and has become very successful.

There is also also a need to hire more people to support growth. About 50 employees support brands in the United States today.

Its clients include companies such as Walmart, Samsung, Sephora, Tiffany, LVMH, Accorhotels, Avis, BNP Paribas, GoPro, Ikea, and Nissan.

“The U.S. is a sophisticated market when it comes to ecommerce and analytics, but it’s also crowded,” Bellaiche said. “The funding will be important to gain more visibility.”

Visibility, indeed. Although not apparently related, the funding supports Google’s tests to drive searches from its engine direct to answers of queries on publisher sites. When the Featured Snippet links to an article on a publisher site using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Google will scroll the user down to the answer in the orange highlighted section.

“We see many companies investing heavily in acquisition as they try to bring more people to their website, but not spending enough on content to retain visitors that come to the website,” he said. “And when they add content, they do it blindly. They don’t know what content keeps visitors on the site and coming back.”

Analyzing the behavior of site visitors remains critical for marketers in order to understand which type of content attracts and retains visitors.