As different as every vertical and social search engine is from one another, they all tend to share one critical element: they are targetted at the user. The B2B market in every other industry, however, tends to represent a massive amount of opportunity simply because it represents a niche. Well, vertical search is all about niche, so it's little surprise that a kind of B2B vertical search engine, SupplyFram.com, is announcing the successful outcome of its latest series of funding. As the press release states:

Pasadena, CA (PRWEB) June 21, 2007 -- SupplyFrame, Inc. (www.supplyframe.com), a vertical search engine for electronic components, today announced $7 million in Series B funding led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). SupplyFrame's existing investors, Clearstone Venture Partners and Arcturus Capital, are also participating in the financing. Irwin Federman, General Partner at USVP, will join the SupplyFrame Board of Directors.
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"Hundreds of thousands of professionals have chosen SupplyFrame as their online place to make electronic component decisions," said Steve Flagg, CEO, SupplyFrame, Inc. "This funding validates our approach to deliver trusted, authorized content that instantly answers the stream of questions asked by industry decision-makers."

With direct connections to major component manufacturers and authorized distributors, SupplyFrame has created a free, trusted electronic component search engine for engineers and buyers to find authoritative information on millions of electronic components with no registration required.
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"Consumer search has historically been successful with performance-based advertising and lead generation. SupplyFrame is delivering the same model inside the business process with performance and search-based advertising. This is an exciting change for the industry," said Jim Armstrong, Managing Director, Clearstone Ventures.

What interests me most about this kind of B2B vertical search, of course, is the advertising opportunity. First, providers of products and services have a substantial opportunity to reach potential client by buying PPC advertising on the SupplyFrame SERP. More to the point, however, SupplyFrame itself can capitalize on the potential to establish a network of affiliate marketers. A number of blogs and online publications may very well be interested in featuring PPC advertising that is being served by SupplyFrame on their web properties. After all, many industry insiders should be interested in knowing (1) that there is such a search engine in existence, and (2) that individual advertisers are offering certain products and services at economical rates.