Hover.in, worlds first publisher driven in-text content and ad delivery platform, received seed funding from Media2Win (one of India’s leading Interactive Advertising agencies) for development of its innovative in-text platform. The funding amount is for a meaningful equity position in the company. Krishna Kumar - CEO of Media2win also joins the Hover board.

Till date, in-text technology has been primarily used only to display contextual ads - mostly automated. However, with Hover.in, publishers can create and customize the content appearing within the Hover bubble (Hoverlet).

The biggest advantage that Hover offers is that publisher can also control what appears where, unlike existing in-text providers who do not offer any control.

Hover.in is currently in Beta and is opened for select few publishers in India. In next quarter Hover.in plans to partner with large Indian portals that have shown tremendous interest in the Hover platform. Hover is also in talks with leading VC’s to raise Series A funding.

Hover.in is based out of Pune and the team is currently 8 people strong including the founders Arun Prabhudesai and Bhasker Kode.

About Hover.in: In June 2007, while Arun was in USA, he partnered with Bhasker’s pet project on in-text technology. After brainstorming and developing the prototype, they showcased it at various events including proto Jan 08 edition, where they were one of the five Internet startups to be shortlisted. Thus Hover.in took shape and is currently being piloted with number of Indian publishers.

About Me2w: Launched in December 2004, Media2win is a leading independent full service interactive agency in India. Media2win offers comprehensive services across the digital marketing spectrum. Media2win’s client list includes brands like Tata Sky, Lenovo, Max New York Life, Microsoft, Diageo, Tata Indicom, Viacom 18. Media2win has also won industry awards for creative excellence.

About in-text: In-text advertising platform has been quite popular in the West with more than 25,000 medium and large sized publishers and bloggers using it on their sites. Comscore recently reported that top 2 in-text ad networks had 43% and 26% reach in US market.

Among the 3,000-plus respondents queried by Nielsen from May 7 to May 16 of 2008, half indicated a positive opinion of advertisers who use in-text ads, outdoing all other formats tested. (source)

Hover.in has been integrated with Sify - one of India’s leading Indian news portals - where they have witnessed positive results.