Zvents, the local search engine and paid listings ad network, today announced that it has secured $24 million in funding.

New strategic investors include Nokia Growth Partners, the growth capital arm of Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and the world’s leading mobile phone supplier; and AT&T (NYSE: T), the largest U.S. wireless company which, through its YELLOWPAGES.COM subsidiary, is also the leading U.S. internet yellow pages search directory. NAVTEQ, the world leader in premium-quality digital map data, Vantage Point Venture Partners and Red Rock Ventures, also participated in the financing.

Zvents will use the proceeds to expand the reach of its local listings advertising network, which enables both local businesses and national chains to promote their locations with search-targeted events such as sales and weekly specials. Zvents will also further invest in expanding the deployment of its successful local search platform, which currently powers a network of more than 250 media partners.

“We are delighted to have led this round of funding for Zvents, enabling them to bring their world-class local search service to the converged worlds of internet and mobility,” said John Gardner, managing partner of Nokia Growth Partners. “We believe that the combination of next-generation mobile devices and powerful server-side search services will be a powerful channel to deliver local information to consumers. Zvents has found an innovative way to connect local search to the marketing needs of local merchants, offering a compelling means of driving exciting, context-based mobile experiences.”

Zvents powers a unified international search index for the partner network, on which local consumers everywhere can perform “what, when, and where” searches for millions of events, businesses, performers, and other activities in their areas.  This unique search technology platform aggregates data via web crawling and extraction, user- and merchant-generated content, and dozens of data partnerships; and provides localized search relevance and ranking to individual media partners.

Through its search service, Zvents creates for local businesses the opportunity to promote their locations online in ways that match their established media buying patterns.  Events motivate consumers to engage with local businesses – a fact that local advertisers have utilized in print promotions for decades.

“Zvents has spent four years building a world-class local search service,” said Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and founder. “This funding will enable us to dramatically scale the value of that service to our network of media partners, local consumers, and local advertisers.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 7:30 am and is filed under Alts, News, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.