Pixazza is losing its unwieldy name as the company looks to evolve from being a photo ad network that specialized in tagging jpegs and gifs for direct response in-image purchases, to a wider platform for sharing, indexing and creating apps for online pictures.
The three-year-old Google-backed Mountain View company will now be known as “Luminate” and instead of billing itself as “AdSense for Images,” CRO Chas Edwards tells paidContent that the company now hopes to be known as platform for developers to work out tools for deriving revenue from online photos in a variety of ways.
As Pixazza (the name is a mashup of “picture” and “piazza,” the Italian word for town square), Luminate has raised nearly $20 million from August Capital, CMEA Ventures, Foundation Capital and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), as well as angel investors like Ron Conway , former eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) COO Maynard Webb, and Facebook CFO Gideon Yu.
The company developed fairly new twist on e-commerce: it would partner with publishers on tagging and indexing images on their sites. The purpose would be to highlight products within those images so consumers can make a purchase after moving their cursor on top of a desired item.
The company developed fairly new twist on e-commerce: it would partner with publishers on tagging and indexing images on their sites. The purpose would be to highlight products within those images so consumers can make a purchase after moving their cursor on top of a desired item.