Zignal Labs scoops up $10.7M because brands will still pay for social media monitoring tools

Zignal Labs is a San Francisco-based company that helps brands and organizations monitor online media to see who’s talking about them or about topics relevant to them. And this morning the company announced it has raised $10.7 million in new funding.

It will use the funds to continue growing its team and acquire new customers.

Zignal Labs lets its customers organize, filter, and otherwise shuffle around social media data to find mentions, “relevant conversations,” data on topics, and so on. It offers nice dashboards that can show its customers whatever data they need in order to monitor their brands or extract insights around particular topics.

Zignal Labs operates in a fairly crowded and sometimes misunderstood space. Companies like Wayin also help organizations monitor social media, while Lithium Technologies is all about helping them connect with consumers on social media, and Resolution Media offers a large suite of social media services, including creative and analytics. And these are just a few of the companies covering all of these social media marketing areas in a very crowded industry.

Zignal recently appointed cofounders Josh Ginsberg and Adam Beaugh as chief executive and president/chief product officer respectively. It has also hired Alyson Welch, formerly of Akamai, to lead its sales.

The company raised its new funds from existing investors Figtree Partners’ Andy Ballard, Ross Investment Associates’ Mitchell Cohen, and Zignal Labs cofounder and chairman Jim Hornthal.

Zignal Labs was founded in 2011 by Ginsberg, Hornthal, and Beaugh, originally under the name PolitEar, which it changed in Feb. 2013.