May 05, 2008
StoryBids Launches Product Placement Marketplace
Irvine, CA-based Storybids launched a product placement marketplace where online video content creators can hook up with sponsors. Storybids say that they closed Series A in August 2007 from Toronto's STN Labs.
Storybids contends that a reason that online video advertising has not taken off is that viewers skip past ads inserted into YouTube vids. By placing product placements into videos you take away that problem. That makes sense. The hard part will be for a startup like StoryBids to get the attention of product advertisers. It doesn't strike us as an immediately scalable concept.
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April 30, 2008
Israeli Stealth Mode Firm AdYouNet Raises $1M
AdYouNet Technologies, which remains in stealth mode, has raised $1M from Xenia Venture Capital and NetService Ventures. It had raised $400K in 2007 from by International Venture Fund.
Details are sketchy but AdYouNet (formerly Webbi) promises to allow enterprises to target internet advertising campaigns just to their customers, as those customers browse anywhere on the web. They say it is developing a CRM advertising application that enables one-to-one identification of targeted users to deliver a tailored advertisement campaign.
AdYouNet is led by Sagee Schnaittacher who was CEO of Ventiv Media, a small Israel-based online ad representation firm.
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Angel Backs Domain Name Milker WhyPark
Ohio-based domain name parking service WhyPark says it has raised $230K in angel funding from one of its customers - an investor and domainer named Alan Macomber. WhyPark says it hosts over 40K domains. It's not a bad business. WhyPark charges parkers a fee and in exchange WhyPark takes measures to maximize revenues while the domains are parked. Currently, it only brings in somewhat contextually relevant content in an effort to keep visitors on a parked site, but they plan to do more. Think of them as the small Ohio-based relative to Demand Media.
WhyPark also announced that it now has an ad network. Previously, customers had to use their own Adsense accounts to generate revenue from domains at WhyPark.
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April 29, 2008
Adify Finds $300M+ Daddy In Cox Enterprises
Cox Enterprises will pay $300M plus potential bonuses. Investors in the company included Peacock Equity, the venture investment arm of NBC Universal, US Venture Partners, Venrock Associates and Time Warner Investments. Adify had raised a total of $27M in funding in two rounds.
Adify has built an ad server. Those are a dime a dozen but what made Adify unique is that it has focused on providing quasi-private label ad servers to niche publishers that want to expand their ad sales businesses to represent other publishers. So you have sites like Yardbarker, a sports site, that partnered with Adify and is now selling and serving sports ads for comparable sites. Yarbarker and others work a rev share with Adify on the ads served.
We understand why a company like Cox would be interested in Adify. Niche ad networks are hot this year and Adify is the leading proponent. Also, if it was only businesses like Yardbarker that bought into Adify that would be one thing but big brands like Forbes and Martha Stewart have bought in.
On the other hand, everyone that we have talked with considers this to be a dicey move. Adify is not profitable and doesn't claim impressive revenues and impressions. Plus reviews of its technology suggest that it has a ways to go to compete with other ad servers. Moreover, Google, Tribal Fusion and others have launched free ad servers.
CEO Interview
The story was originally posed by PaidContent.
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April 25, 2008
Spotrunner Rival SaysMe.tv Raises First Round
LA's SaysMe has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A financing led by Intel Capital with Prime Capital and Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Films and other angel investors. Like Spotrunner, SaysMe is building a library of political and issue-based ads which can be branded and run on cable networks. SaysMe is well behind the curve compared to Spotrunner but is hoping to get a jump start by focusing on ad development for political campaigns .
The company ws founded by Morgan Warstler, who has sold a couple of companies to Live Universe, outdoor advertising's Bill Apfelbaum and others.
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April 21, 2008
Travel Ad Network Jets Off With $15M In 1st Funding
We have known the guys from Travel Ad Network for some time. Founded back in December 2003, Travel Ad Network (TAN) has been not raised venture funding to date, but has been scrappy. It claims to be the largest online travel audience on the Internet with 10.5M Comscore monthly uniques. That's not a hugely impressive number but travel tends to garner strong CPMs.
TAN is an exclusive online advertising salesforce for over 50 travel planning and booking sites. TAN represents Kayak, RandMcNally, LonelyPlanet, CheapFlights, and RoughGuides. They key here is that TAN insists on and gets exclusive inventory.
Headquartered in New York, TAN has raised $15M in a first round of venture funding. The funding comes from Rho Ventures, Village Ventures and others.
Staying with travel, the sector continues to find venture interest. San Francisco-based TripIt, an online travel web site, has raised $5.1M in a Series B funding round from Sabre Holdings, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and the European Founders Fund. And The Nile Guide raised a first round of funding from Draper Richards and KPG Ventures.
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April 16, 2008
Facebook Ad Network BuddyMedia Raised $6.5M
We got a little confused today at Adtech because we saw an eBuddy mascot, we had talked with BuddyTV and we picked up on the funding for BuddyMedia. Listen Buddy.
Tied with the closing of its series B financing Buddy Media launched its ad network. Ron Conway, Greycroft Partners, and the European Founders Fund contributed to the $6.5M round along with 14 of the company's Series A investors. Launched in September 2007, Buddy Media helps publishers and advertisers promote and monetize social media applications. Its clients are primarily major brands, ad agencies and large media companies that want to leverage the social networks.
Buddy Media claims a rapid application development platform lets brands launch their applications in a matter of weeks. Its AceBucks loyalty program promotes user engagement with the applications.
Based in NYC, Buddy Media says its network of applications have grown to over 8M users and over 180M page views per month. The company's founder and CEO Michael Lazerow sold U-Wire to Student Advantage and GOLF.com to Time Inc.
In September 2007, Buddy Media raised $1.5M from angel and venture investors, including Keith Bank (KB Partners), James Altucher (Stockpickr.com, TheStreet.com), Peter Thiel (PayPal founder, Clarium Capital and Facebook angel and board member), Roger Ehrenberg, Mark Pincus ( Support.com, Tribe, Freeloader and Facebook angel) and Bay Partners. It's interesting to note that a number of Facebook investors are investing in a Facebook advertising network.
BuddyMedia's Michael Lazerow
VC Mike gets the interview after the launch
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Federated Media Sells Minority Stake For $50M
We generally avoid congratulating firms that we post about for raising funding but in this case we raise a pint to our own site representation firm Federated Media which today closed a $50M round of financing led by Oak Investment which got a minority stake.
We met-up today with a publisher who is also rep'd by Federated and who claims to have been their toughest critic. The usual gripes about FM has been about their server speed and how the don't manage remnant or backfill ads. But this publisher remains a stalwart FM supporter because - surprise, surprise - nobody can touch their direct sales payouts.
It's always interesting to see who FM touts as its leading pubs. In its release its leads with Boing Boing, Ars Technica, Ask A Ninja, Digg, Dooce, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and NOTCOT, as well as social networking applications including Graffiti Wall and Watercooler.
FM is not revealing its valuation but $50M for a minority investment given how much has already been invested suggests that its at $150M or more. FM has said it has been profitable since last year’s third quarter.
So why raise so much funding? Well we understand they plan an office in San Francisco (maybe take over the CNET building?) We might also expect some M&A steps. They could invest or by some of their publishers or they could buy ad serving or management technology. This will be fun to watch.
The deal also reminds us of two other blog moguls - Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton. Calacanis rushed to sell WeblogsInc. for $25M. Calacanis publicly jumped on his rival Denton to sell Gawker Media while there were still buyers. Now it seems that by the valuation of FM, a blog empire that started well after WeblogsInc., that Calacanis may have been too hasty.
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Posted at 01:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 10, 2008
Yahoo! Buys Ad Analytics Firm Indextools
Yahoo! has paid an undisclosed amount for online ad analytic firm IndexTools. Founded in 2000 in Frankfort, Germany, IndexTools' competes with bigs like Webtrends, Visual Sciences, Omniture and Coremetrics. To some extent it also competes at the low end with Google Analytics and Microsoft adCenter Analytics.
IndexTools track consumer clicks when a visitor loads a Web page that contains IndexTools' tracking script. The script gathers data about the Web page and visitor and forwards the information to a data center, which processes and archives the data.
IndexTools charges anywhere from $50 to $250 per month depending on the size of your business. Yahoo! boasts that it will put the offering in front of its 150K advertiser users. This is much less than its other enterprise competitors. IndexTools says that "We are probably one forth of the price of Omniture, one third of the price of Coremetrix, and one half of the price of WebTrends."
One of the most interesting aspects of the deal is that IndexTools tracks data across Google, Yahoo and MSFT Adcenter. And you can bet most of the data is about Google. Also, Yahoo has close ties with a lot of the analytics companies like Omniture. This is sure to put a frost those. That said, we have to hand it to the Yahoo! folks for making strong strategic moves at a time of turmoil.
Interview With Indextool's COO
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April 09, 2008
Search Engine Marketing Firms Continue to Raise Funding - Kenshoo and Marin Software
Arts Alliance announced today that it has completed an investment in Kenshoo. Arts Alliance is the second venture capital fund to invest in Kenshoo, joining Sequoia Capital.
Kenshoo's flagship product automates the creation and management of search marketing campaigns. It helps users to manage bids and analyze click fraud among other things.
Kenshoo is led by CEO Yoav Izhar-Prato who previously ran Beijing PrePay.
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A Kenshoo competitor, Marin Software, has also just closed a round of funding. The San Francisco-based firm has raised $7.25M in Series B funding led by Benchmark Capital. Marin feels far more mature than Kenshoo at this point.
Marin charges 5% of search spend for $50K monthly budgets on down to 2% for the largest budgets over $2M per month. The company has attracted more than 25 customers, including Zappos.com and ZipRealty, as well as agency partners such as Avenue A | Razorfish.
Marin is led by CEO and co-founder Chris Lien who was COO at Adteractive.
We have heard a number of insiders speculate that the search engine marketing game is over. As Google consolidates the market and if MSFT succeeds at owning Yahoo there are fewer reasons to pay someone or to buy software to manage this for you. But the size and growth of the market is indeed impressive and leaves plenty of room for startups to growth. JP Morgan says that paid search in the US is expected to grow 23% annually, from $11.8B in 2007 to $26.8B in 2011. Over the same period, markets outside the US are projected to grow 34% annually from $10.2B to $33.1B.
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April 08, 2008
FOX Buys Majority Stake In European Online Video Ad Network Utarget
FOX Networks has bought a majority stake in Utarget, an online advertising network based in London. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But .Fox Networks picked up 56% of Utarget. In 2007, Utarget received investment from Foresight Partners.
Utarget operates an ad network focused on online video. It owns Britain’s Premium Video Advertising Network which is comprised of more than 600 U.K. Web sites. FOX has already rebranded the firm as Utarget.Fox. They say it will work with Fox Interactive Media Audience Network to provide ads to News Corp sites and third parties.
Utarget was founded in 2000 by CEO Phil Cooper who had launched an internet portal for over- 50s (www.50connect.co.uk) in 2000. He says he sold that business in 2005 "for a 7-figure sum" and raised venture capital in 2006 to expand it into Europe and online video advertising. The firm had previously announced a partnership with Blinkx.
DotFox's CEO says that UTarget was paid a nice multiple on its revenues which he says were north of $9.9M from the last 12 months.
News Corp. and Fox have operated behind the scenes in online advertising but they are putting together a global footprint the likes that only Google and AOL can match. We expect that they might take a stake in a large indie ad network (Tribal Fusion is rumored to be in play). Match the properties that they own plus a powerful ad sales force and technology and you have a monster new player to content with.
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Posted at 07:57 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 31, 2008
Undertone Networks Gets Strategic Investment
Online ad startup Undertone Networks says it has received a strategic investment from JMI Equity, first outside financial investment. The amount on the deal was not disclosed.
Undertone Networks currently has a network of 350 "top tier sites." Undertone's offerings to advertisers include: IAB ad sizes, rich media, 16+ channels, behavioral targeting, video (pre-roll & in-page), and search engine marketing (SEO & SEM).
Undertone is actually a subsidiary of Intercept Interactive - another online ad agency offering marketing and media strategy, creative development, and media planning and buying.
Undertone and Intercept were founded by (in March 2001) and are run by Mike Cassidy who was a VP of Sales at About.com.
We have heard strong, positive comments about Undertone. Naysers will tell you that advertisers will stop paying top dollar to appear on expensive sites because you can get to the same audience for less by using behavioral technology or through Adwords. But there is and always will be advertisers that don't want to appear just anywhere. Rather they think that by appearing on BusinessWeek.com they get cache and are sure they are hitting the right people.
View - Undertone site
View - Intercept site
Posted at 01:23 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 27, 2008
AdGent 007 Lives and Lets Die With $5.3M Round
San Francisco's AdGent 007 has raised $5.3M with CM Capital, which put in $5M of that as its lead Series A investor. AdGent had raised seed funding from One Ventures
We should think of AdGent 007 as a regional ad agent for large publishers. AdGent 007 plans to monetize geo specific inventory on premium brand websites across the globe. For most US publishers, they sell direct and/or work with ad networks to sell their US inventory. That often leaves as much as 40% or more of a site's traffic that comes from outside the US squandered. The only real option is to run Adsense on international traffic as it's the only truly global ad network at this point.
AdGent 007 is putting together regional on ground sales forces. Its first recent hire was to put a sales guy in Europe.
Additionally the startup is launching an online ad marketplace for media buyers to buy international traffic. Furthermore, they are rolling out a product called The Optimizer, which it says will match "the right network ad to the right consumer at the right time on a premium publisher’s website."
AdGent 007 is led by Cameron Yuill who was a VP at Cendant/Orbitz and also started the online travel business Viator.
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March 18, 2008
Downloadable Media Advertising's VoloMedia Raises $3.5M
Podcasting has not been the startup success sector that some founders had envisioned. But several companies raised so much capital that they have had the chance to re-launch. VoloMedia was known as PodBridge but has rebranded itself and is building new technology to get away from the podcast advertising tar pit.
VoloMedia, which has raised $3.5M of venture financing, specializes in advertising, metrics, and reporting for downloadable video and audio. The investor was Leader Ventures, which does blended debt and equity financing.
VoloMedia allows content owners to insert ads dynamically into iTunes libraries or RSS streams. Owners can also use a plug-in to track whether a podcast has been played, and refresh an ad unit even after the podcast has been downloaded. An upgrade will give consumers more control over the media, letting them subscribe to a wider variety of audio and video content they find online and share it with others.
VoloMedia was co-founded by Andrey Yruski, who counts himself as one of the founding members of BigBand Networks. Mayfield Fund, Sutter Hill Ventures and Worldview Technology Partners had previously invested.
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Pre-launch Social Media Traffic Booster Adoptic VC Funded
Menlo Park-based Adoptic says that it has raised an undisclosed amount of VC funding. The pre-launch startup calls itself an "online marketplace that makes advertising on the web intuitive, effective and fair. The Adoptic community is comprised of individuals with a web-site, blog or a social network profile. Our platform allows users to spread and market their content to their friends and community members by participating in a simple system that guarantees visibility."
The startup was founded by CEO Mehdi Yahyanejad Mehdi who also runs the popular Persian community site Balatarin.
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March 17, 2008
MSFT Buys Online Ad Optimization's Rapt
Microsoft has paid an undisclosed amount for San Francisco-based Rapt. Rapt sells an inventory management solution (OLAP based operational analytics and business intelligence suite) for online media publishers and ad networks. What that means is that a large Web publisher has fluctuating demand as ad campaigns come and go and traffic rises and falls. Rapt's software helps them to understand and predict those changes. In practice, the company delivers a lot of consulting to help publishers to use their software.
Founded in 1998, Rapt has raised around $55M from Accel Partners and Levensohn Venture Partners .
For Microsoft, the deal beefs up its Atlas Publisher Suite, which it acquired through its buyout of Aquanitive and which goes head to head with Google's Doubleclick Dart server. Getting Rapt will also help Microsoft sharpen its hooks into some very large publishers that use Rapt including CNET, Dow Jones, Expedia, Fox Interactive Media, MTV Networks, NBC Universal, The New York Times, Reuters, USA TODAY, and Yahoo!.
As a side-note, in 2006, Accel and Levensohn reached an out-of-court settlement with two of Rapt's co-founders, who had alleged "fraud and breach of fiduciary duty."
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March 14, 2008
UK's Adviva Media Bought By Specific Media. Germany's AdLink Group Next
Having recently raised $100M with specific aspiration to do M&A deals, Irvine, CA-based ad network Specific Media, an has acquired UK ad network Adviva Media. No financial terms were disclosed. Adviva had raised EUR 6.6M from Kennet Partners.
Generally speaking, the large US ad networks have battled it out domestically. Only the biggest such as Advertising.com have made big moves into Europe. This move by Specific Media gets it an early foothold in the UK as well as France and Germany. Specific Media says that the combined venture will make it the 4th largest ad network in the UK, with a reach of 25.9M unique users.
We expect to see another large European ad network deal shortly with an American buyer. Germany-based AdLink Group has been put up for sale by its holding company United Internet. Morgan Stanley has been assigned to find a buyer for the ad network. This news was reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, citing anonymous sources.
The report indicated that AdLink Media expects a a three-digit million Euro sum from the sale of the unit, adding that Adlink is valued at about 400M Euros, with 84.3% owned by United Internet.
View - Adviva Site
View - Adlnk site
Adviva HQ
AdLink Group HQ
Posted at 12:11 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 12, 2008
Mochi Media Closes $4M For Casual Games Ad Network
SF-based Mochi Media has raised $4M in Series A funding from Accel Partners. Mochi Media builds tools for content developers and distributors. Its first product, MochiBot is a Flash tracking tool that provides usage statistics for Flash content no matter what website or server the content resides on. MochiKit is an open source JavaScript library built to simplify asynchronous web development. And they have launched a community for Flash developers called Mochiland. Its flagship product is MochiAds, an ad network for casual, Flash-based games.
Check this recent interview and demo with the startup's founders
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Posted at 11:03 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Universal Ad Raises $8.5M For Retail Advertising
Israeli startups are increasingly making a name for themselves in the online advertising world. (note the IPO filing for Eyeblaster and the big buyout of Quigo to name a couple.) Another name here is Universal Ad, which has just raised $8.5M. It's focus is on retail advertising.
Universal Ad is a bit different in that its software is used for both online and offline purposes. Say you are office-depot and you have your monthly print promotionals to send out. You probably have multiple regional versions that you have to manage with your printer, plus you have to manage those online as well. Universal Ad's software would prevent you from doing all-nighters to pull this off.
Clients include major printers like Quad Graphics as well as retailers like Office Depot.
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Posted at 10:43 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 11, 2008
Eyeblaster Times IPO
Israel/NYC-based has confounded us with some odd financial decisions. Today we learn that Eyeblaster plans an IPO that may raise $115M. In 2007, Eyeblaster's profit rose to $7.4M from $3.7M. The sirm's revenue jumped 62% to $44.7M from $27.7M. Eyeblaster's customer base approached 1000 in 2007.
Eyeblaster was founded in 1999 and specializes in rich media advertising. The company has developed some standards that have won it riches and to be clear its products rock. But the online video age has brought us a great number of new ideas that may take fire. The challenge is that with new forms of online ad units, Eyeblaster is being challenged by upstarts that may now formats like video better than Eyeblaster. We would not invest in Eyeblaster until we saw them take some major leadership stake in video.
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Posted at 01:56 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 10, 2008
Jivox Launches Sweet Video Ad Platform
Among the recent launches that we have seen, Jivox is one of the solid. If you know AdReady, think of this as AdReady meets video. AdReady provides templates to let you create banner ads. Jivox gives you templates to create video ads. We agree with the premise that if you can create a professional video ad it will help get more attention that a flat or flash banner ad. The big challenge here is do the video ads stand out or will they cause embarrassment. From what we have seen the Jivox ads stand out.
Jivox is currently free. It allows self-service users to place images, video clips and music files from Jivox's library or grab from you own video files into ad templates. You can then customize with copy and features like coupons and click-through promos.
Once an ad is made in the Jivox system, users define the demographics of their target audience and tell set a spend limits with flight dates Jivox says it has its own network to place the ads from there. So that's how the startup intends to make money - by taking a cut of that. While we like that idea in the long run, we think that Jivox is likely underestimating how tough it is to place ads with appropriate sites and we hope they would soon think about creating some partnerships with media buyers.
In addition to AdReady, we would say that Jivox competes with Spot Runner, EZShow, Visible World and AditAll.
We wrote up Jivox last Spring when it was in stealth and had raised seed funds. Now the company is emerging with more details indicating that the startup raised $2.7M in seed funding led by Opus Capital. The company is led by founder Diaz Nesamoney, who previously helped found data-base vendor Informatica, which went public, and Celequest, which was bought in 2007 by Cognos.
The San Mateo, CA and Bangalore, India-based startup has some impressive staff including Naren Nachiappan who was just VP and GM at Wind River.
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Posted at 07:29 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 06, 2008
Up-And-Coming Ad Network Adconian Puts Down $20M For Frontline Direct
The Frontline crew, which makes its HQ in Las Vegas, can be expected to have at it this weekend. The startup just sold to Adconian for $20M in cash and stock. Frontline Direct is an online direct marketing and customer acquisition company, specializing in database management and email. Frontline's line of business is fairly mature and competitors really grow by out-hustling each other.
Adconian (fka Euroclick) recently raised $80M led by Index Ventures. The idea here seems to be to add revenues to Adconian without paying too steep a multiple. With its $80M warchest, Adconian could do a few more deals like this and then be a viable large M&A target.
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Posted at 10:38 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 05, 2008
Spotrunner Buys Local Ads' Weblistic
Weblistic is an advertising agency that helps local businesses attract customers from the Internet. Weblistic’s technology identifies buyers and directs them to local companies.
Today LA-based Spotrunner, which has raised $70M says, that is paying an undisclosed amount to buy Weblistic in an all stock deal. Weblistic raised a $3.5M venture round in early 2007, led by Foundation Capital.
The Fremont, CA-based startup was founded by Ketan Shah who was EVP/CTO at YellowPages.com (which was Sold to AT&T ) and CEO, President at Sales-Watch.com (which was sold to YellowPages.com).
The deal signals a transition for Spotrunner, which focuses on TV and radio ads as Weblistic is focussed squarely on online search placement.
Weblistic ad
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Posted at 10:40 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 26, 2008
Breaking Down Glam Media's Huge New Investment
San Francisco-based Glam Media has just closed $65M plus $20M in debt. It had previously raised $30M. Investors include Hubert Burda Media, GLG Partners, Duff Ackerman & Goodrich and Hercules Technology Growth Capital. The Wall Street Journal values Glam at around $500M.
So what do we make of this. Glam has been widely criticized for making mountains of moll hills. So its easy to run against the grain and argue that Glam is the real deal. But we continue to feel weird about Glam. Should we hear in a couple of years that Glam had suffered a collapse of some sort we would surely not be surprised and would think that of all the hot startups that we cover, this one has some of the last technology and natural user loyalty.
We can convince ourselves that Glam is on the right path. They compete with iVillage which seems like old-school red meat and Glam's model is comparable to Federated Media's in that it wants to empower site owners to do their thing and think of Glam as their top partner.
But this analysis is overshadowed by the logic that an alternative to Glam Media is just around the corner. Advertisers want to get to female audiences interested in shopping so Glam steps in to serve them. But it extracts a steep share of the publisher's meal ticket. We would expect some new startups to step in to deliver qualified categories of sites to advertisers in ways that don't extract the 50% cut that verticals like Glam extract.
Glam's CEO tries his best to make Glam feel like it is more than a vertical ad network
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February 21, 2008
Yahoo's Right Media Wakes Up And Smells The Coffee
We are headed to Right Media's "Eggs and Exchanges" event Thursday AM in San Francisco. Of high interest will be to what extent the mayhem at Yahoo HQ is affecting Right Media. The startup ad exchange which was bought by Yahoo enjoys a lead over Microsoft's ADECN (when's the last anyone has heard from them?) as well as the still-in-closed beta Doubleclick Exchange. But will the negative energy but too much for the Right Media group to bear? Updates are coming.
Posted at 02:25 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 19, 2008
Chinese Billboards' SkyFlying Group Raises $83M First Round
There has been some land grab in the Chinese outdoor advertising space. Apparently advertisers feel that the get a big bang for the Yen when they advertise outdoors at airports, subway stations and railway stations in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
SkyFlying Group has raised $83M in Series A from Goldman Sachs, New Horizon Capital and Sequoia China.
SkyFlying competes with the likes of Network CN (OTC Bulletin Board), Dahe Media (Hong Kong listed) and Red Flag.
The back-drop to this huge round is that China is one of the fastest growing markets in the world, and one of the largest advertising markets in Asia.
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Posted at 11:51 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 15, 2008
Israel's Nuconomy Backed By WPP
WPP - the ad giant with a growing appetite for digital plays - has bought a stake in Israeli Web analytics company NuConomy for an undisclosed amount, although Globes reports that it was around $3M
NuConomy claims its platform measures consumers engagement and interaction with content, while giving advertisers actionable insight into the audience they engage with. In short, what the want to provide for free is audience engagement data that you might find with the likes of Omniture. How and why will they do it for free? Well we don't yet know the biz model but surely they plan on selling aggregate data. They also are working on software to help you target ads at your readers once they have been segmented by NuConomy.
The acquisition follows a handful of recent WPP investments in digital media firms, including Integrated Media Measurement, VideoEgg and SpotRunner.
Israel-based Nuconomy is led by CEO Shahar Nechmad.
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ReadWriteWeb has a great run-down of Nuconomy
Posted at 01:35 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 14, 2008
SocialVibe's SocNet Ad Network Raises $4.12M
Joe Marchese is an online ad sector columnist who was been penning provocative analysis for some time. Most recently he has been telling us to watch out for a startup that he had in stealth mode. Now we learn that SocialVibe (aka Archetype Media) has raised $4.12M in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures.
Founded in September 2006, SocialVibe calls itself an evolving brand advertising online to address the social media/brand advertiser divide. It's an idea that we like, although one that we think will be very hard to pull off. Hard to scale comes to mind. Let's say you write a blog on venture capital and startups, SocialVibe might represent you to land a sponsorship deal with say Wilson Sonsini. And as part of that deal Wilson Sonsini might even send you a Wilson fleece jacket. SocialVibe would then help you to extend this sponsorship relationship to the social networks.
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Posted at 12:58 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 05, 2008
Mobile Ad Vendor Ringleader Digital Raises $6M
NYC's Ringleader Digital (formerly MoPhap) has built a mobile web ad server and ad network. The company also serves ad agencies and marketers with mobile media planning, purchasing, and distribution through a Web-based ad manager platform.
Ringleader has just closed a $6M in Series A round led by W2 Group, an investment group that has been backing several Net marketing firms.
As we have been documenting, mobile advertising has been one of the hottest funding trends of late. It has become increasingly difficult for the various players to demonstrate or explain their differences. Ringleader's positioning is that they support ad served to more handsets than other ad networks. It doesn't seem that to us that media buyer's give a rat's ass about that. If Ringleader can get big distribution and perform it will stick around. If not, the competition will eat their lunch. The clock is ticking.
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Posted at 12:17 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 04, 2008
What Yahoo! By MSFT Would Mean For The Venture Economy
The suits along Wall Street love deals like MSFT's buy-out offer for Yahoo!. Yahoo!s management has screwed the pooch leaving vindictive Yahoo! shareholders feeling giddy about the prospect of Steve Balmer bringing down the whip. Even better there's the prospect of a bidding war for the decrepit Yahoo!.
Withing the venture economy, however, there are plenty of long faces. We talked with folks who make their living in search marketing who feel that it's time for a career change. Last year they could make a convincing case to clients that it requires brain surgeons to master spending across Google, Yahoo, MSN, plus B-leagers. If the MSFT/Yahoo! deal goes through then you might expect to see Google with 90%+ of search market share and MSN/Yahoo! with the rest. Goodbye search marketing industry.
Another reason for the long faces is that if the deal goes through startups will have lost a primary go-to-guy for liquidity. Despite its lousy stock performance and its painful passing on buyout deals that included Facebook, MySpace and Google, Yahoo! could be counted on to buy startups or at least contribute to the bidding up of prices.
It would be great if there was a new face in the crowd that could be counted on to take Yahoo!'s place as a force to provide a lift to the venture economy. But who would that be? Facebook maybe? Perhaps. Silicon Valley doesn't like oligopolies but that's what we are facing today.
Posted at 12:23 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 01, 2008
Angels Go For Video Ad Marketplace SpotExchange
We have heard good things from users of online video advertising network SpotXchange. The Colorado startup was spun-off of Booyah Networks but announced today that it has raised an undisclosed amount in its first round of angel funding. Investors include Alex Bogusky, Chief Creative Officer, Crispin Porter + Bogusky as well as a host of executives at Janus Fund.
SpotExchange is currently filling a need in the video advertising arena as there is currently a glut of video inventory matching a dearth of ads. Networks like video egg can run some ads on videos but quickly run out leaving video publishers who few other options than to go to Spotexchange and see if they can unload their impressions.
View - site
Press Release Source: SpotXchange
SpotXchange Secures Strategic Investment From Angel Investors
Friday February 1, 8:00 am ET
Alex Bogusky becomes investor for industry-leading online video advertising platform
WESTMINSTER, Colo., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Online video advertising network SpotXchange announced today that it has raised an undisclosed amount in its first round of angel funding.
Investors include:
-- Alex Bogusky, Chief Creative Officer, Crispin Porter + Bogusky
-- Laurence Chang, former Portfolio Manager, Janus Worldwide Fund
-- Tim Hudner, former Chief Operations and Chief Technology Officer,
Janus Capital Group
-- Mike Lu, former Portfolio Manager, Janus Global Technology Fund
-- Kent Moore, former Portfolio Manager, Janus Capital Group and Senior
Analyst/Portfolio Manager Marsico Capital
-- Blaine Rollins, former Portfolio Manager, Janus Fund
-- Claire Young, former Portfolio Manager, Janus Olympus Fund
"To date SpotXchange has been funded by Booyah Networks' operating proceeds," said SpotXchange President and CEO Michael Shehan. "However, it was important to energize our 2008 operating plan with additional funds from strategic investors. This allows us to open additional offices, expand our business development team and develop additional functionality in the platform including new ad units."
"I'm excited to be involved. Video advertising is just beginning to take its rightful place online," said Alex Bogusky. "Previously the tools just haven't existed. SpotXchange offers a powerful platform that allows media buyers to manage the performance and reach of their buy in real time instead of getting bogged down in the minutia of setting up an ala carte ad buy."
Based in Colorado and launched in November 2006, the SpotXchange online video advertising network allows advertisers and publishers to buy and sell online video advertising in a true, real-time auction marketplace. The patent-pending technology takes the best practices in sponsored search-self-service tools, free market bidding, precision targeting, transparent reporting, real-time tracking and optimization-and applies those tools to a comprehensive marketplace of online video ad inventory. The marketplace currently represents over one billion monthly impressions.
About SpotXchange
The SpotXchange patent-pending online video advertising platform received the 2007 Streaming Media's Readers' Choice Award for BEST VIDEO AD PLATFORM. The company was spun off from Colorado-based digital marketing and technology company, Booyah Networks in March 2007. Booyah Networks ranked 23rd on the 2006 Inc. 500. Clients and partners include Voxant, Blinkx, Internap, LiveVideo.com, NeoEdge, United Press International and others.
Posted at 11:57 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 30, 2008
Report: Batanga Buying HispanoClick
VC-backed, latin American portal Batanga is close to buying online advertising network HispanoClick, reports Portada. HispanoClick competes with DirectaClick.Fox (bought by Fox International) and Univision.
Batanga raised a$30M series C round last fall led by Tudor Ventures and HIG Capital. This is its first foray into online advertising - we understand that it was a user of ads from HispanoClick.
View - Hispanoclick site
Read - Portada.com
Posted at 04:40 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 25, 2008
Ceaseless Ad Startup Funding Orgy Goes On With Ooyala
Count 'em 11 online ad startups funded just this week and two were bought: IMMI, Covario, EVO Landing (some might not count this as online advertising but part of the biz is in ads), Germany's Adscale, AdInfuse, GoldSpot Media, Smaato, Quantcast, IGA Worldwide, Adchemy, Plus AdOn Network and Prime Visibility were acquired.
The latest funding announced is Ooyala. We had previously reported on Ooyala when it was in stealth made. It was noteworthy as its founders are Bismarck Lepe and Sean Knapp, who came from Google. Google employees who leave the company enjoy a halo effect as it is assumed that they are smarter and better connected than some jerks who left Yahoo. It will interesting to see how many failures will go down before former Googlers lose their privileged status.
Now that has disclosed that is has raised $8.5M in 2nd-round funding led by Sierra Ventures, the curtain over the company has been lifted a bit. (BTW - Ooyala says its total funding is now at $10M. Moreover Ooyala won first place in Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge last month, taking home $100K in cash and services as well as a golden hammer symbolic of the breaking of server boxes.
Ooyala has launched a product called Backlot which allows users to measure, manage, syndicate, and monetize videos across video players. It also tracks over 20 different viewing metrics that detail the performance of online videos and syndication channels. For this Ooyala charges $0.08/hour per video served.
View - site
Read - VentureBeat
Posted at 06:46 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Ad Effectiveness Firm IMMI Raises $25M
This sounds like a nutty idea but it seems to be working. Integrated Media Measurement hands over specialzed cellphones to a panel of everyday folks that measure which TV and radio ads they see and hear. Integrated Media Measurement Inc. Any ads that the panel hear are recorded and then analyzed. That data is then sold to media buyers to provide some layer of metrics to their work - no matter how thin it may be. For most media buyers radio's Arbitron ratings and TV's Nielsen ratings make them feel that they are skating on thin ice so another source of data may be welcome.
Sample report
IMMI has been able to provide results that its predecessors likely could not match. For example, panelists who watched a Burger King commercial with a tie-in to “The Simpsons Movie” were 40% more likely to see the film than those who saw only TV, radio and theater trailers for the movie. IMMI also determined that 10% of the audience of NBC's “Heroes” watched it over the Internet.
San Mateo's Integrated Media Measurement (IMMI) has raised $25M in Series C funding led by WPP's Kantar Media Research with return backers Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Advanced Technology Ventures. The company had raised around $15M in another round.
IMMI is led by Tom Zito, an interesting character who got his start as a rock critic but has since made a nice career as a tech entrepreneur. In 1986, Zito took public AXLON, a high-tech toy company. He then founded Isix which was acquired by Hasbro. He also cofounded game developer Digital Pictures as well as digital record label Garageband.
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Posted at 05:35 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Search Automation's SEMDirector Becomes Covario. Raises $16M
San Diego-based Covario (fka SEMDirector) announced at its annual event, INFLECTIONPoint that FTVentures has led a $16M Series B investment in the company, along with existing investors Dubilier & Company and Voyager Capital. It also changed its name to Cavario reflecting the fact that it is branching out beyond search engine marketing (SEM).
Covario's platform enables global brands to manage search advertising but other interactive media, including display advertising. Covario enables advertisers to understand the relative effectiveness of paid search advertising, natural search optimization, and interactive advertising in a single dashboard. Covario plans to broadening its focus to include performance management technologies beyond search advertising to additional forms of interactive media.
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