Venture Capital

Admiral, a startup that first got its start with ad block recovery tools, announced the close of a $19 million growth equity and debt funding round on Wednesday.

The venture studio Jobi Brands aims for a growing category of marketing tech and services for celebrity-backed brands.

Integral Ad Science CEO Lisa Utzschneider, Magnite CEO Michael Barrett and DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski talked about their experience heading public companies at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview Tuesday, in a panel moderated by LUMA CEO and founder Terence Kawaja.

As app is only as successful as its monetization strategy. And an app’s monetization strategy is only as successful as a developer’s cash flow. But sometimes it takes Apple and Google 30 or even 60 days to compensate their developers for paid downloads and in-app purchases. “That money’s just sitting there in the bank of […]

Quantifind, whose technology is designed to find relevant marketing signals amid the noise of unstructured data, has raised $12 million in a strategic growth round led by Comcast Ventures and Iris Capital. The company had raised about $10.5 million in the last eight months, according to cofounder and CEO Ari Tuchman, although this does not […]

Dynamic Yield, a yield optimization platform that has positioned itself as a quasi-ad server for content, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Marker L.L.C. The Tel Aviv-based company has plans to grow its sales and operations teams in New York and London. Also joining the round as a distribution partner is […]

NetProspex, a cloud-based data management company focused on B2B marketing, has raised $13 million in Series C funding from Spring Lake Equity Partners. NetProspex has grown from 78 employees to 110 from the end of 2013 until now. The company plans to utilize its new funding for sales and marketing development, as well as add […]

San Francisco-based iSocket has raised $5 million in funding, led by Time Warner Investments. The round reflects publishers’ growing interest in the nascent area of programmatic direct ad buying. This latest round represents the second half of iSocket’s B series (the first half was led by Foundry Group) and brings the company’s total to  $16.3 […]

Social data analytics company 4C Insights has raised $5 million in Series B funding from Jump Capital. 4C originated last fall when ecommerce ad-tech company The Echo System merged with Twitter Ads API partner and Facebook PMD Voxsup, founded by Northwestern University Professor Alok Choudhary. 4C currently employs between 30-40 people, but expects to grow […]

‘Tis the season for predictions, so AdExchanger reached out to members of the venture capital community for their opinions on what’s in store for 2014. Click below to read “the bets” or scroll for more: Jeff Crowe, managing partner, Norwest Venture Partners Seth Levine, co-founder and managing director, Foundry Group Roger Ehrenberg, founder and managing […]

Sailthru, a provider of data marketing and personalization solutions, has raised $20 million in Series C financing from ScaleVP, whose past investments include cloud-based marketing technology companies like HubSpot, Omniture, Vitrue and ExactTarget. Sailthru’s founder and CEO Neil Capel, a venture partner at Bowery Capital, said the funding will go toward sales, marketing, product engineering […]

Mobile retargeting platform TapCommerce has raised $10.5 million in a Series A round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from RRE and Nielsen Ventures and existing investors. While Web-based retargeting historically focused on recent visitors who abandoned an onsite purchase, certain aspects of mobile behavior completely disrupt traditional retargeting practices. For instance, TapCommerce CEO […]

Intel Capital, the venture-capital arm of early HookLogic advertiser Intel, has invested $14.3 million in the ecommerce search-advertising company through a Series-B round that included some support from Bain Capital Ventures and former AdMeld CEO Michael Barrett. HookLogic, which recently launched a bid marketplace for ecommerce advertisers called the Retail Search Exchange, powers brands and […]

Gil Beyda is  ‎Founder & Managing Partner at Genacast Ventures. His firm’s investments have included Invite Media (acquired by Google in 2010) and Demdex (acquired by Adobe in 2011). AdExchanger asked Mr. Beyda to explain a fundraising tactic increasingly used by advertising technology startups known as an “inside round.” In venture capital, an “inside round” […]

There were 34 “ad tech & services” deals during the first six months of 2013, double the amount during the same period the year before, according to figures complied by technology focused investment bank Coady Diemar Partners. Total value for H1-2013 M&A activity was up 664% with a collective $1.2 billion spent on acquisitions and […]

Today, LUMA Partners gathered together ad tech executives from near and far for its annual Digital Media Summit during New York City’s Internet Week.  The agenda featured a content-rich day of discussions on the corporate development and strategy side of ad tech, as opposed to the client side. Among the highlights was a keynote by […]

The venture capital community convened for the annual VentureCrush event in New York City today, featuring a gaggle of venture celebrities. Several of the VCs hailed from firms active in the ad tech space, such as Accel Partners (investors in Krux, MoPub, MyThings, etc.), Greycroft (33across, TagMan, Collective) and Sequoia Capital (HubSpot, Drawbridge, Chartboost). Of […]

As a member and managing partner of venture capital group Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Jeff Crowe is well-known in the ad technology space with investments ranging from Admeld to Turn. With several hot topics pulsing in the venture and ad tech spaces, AdExchanger reached out to Crowe to get his views. AdExchanger: What has been the impact of the […]

The last time AdExchanger spoke with First Round Capital partner Chris Fralic in May 2011, Fralic indicated that “hot deals” were getting done faster and valuations were skyrocketing. He warned, “The negatives to be on the lookout for are down rounds as things cool off – it’s not fun…” As the innovation of ad technology […]

Norwest Venture Partners‘ Jeff Crowe doesn’t believe the shakeout of mergers and consolidation is over for ad technology.  He should know as Admeld (acquired by Google) and Brand.net (acquired by Valassis) were NVP companies, and he and his venture firm remain significantly in the game with ad platform Turn. Even though M&A has slowed in 2012, […]

Satya Patel has a long history in the advertising technology world on both the product and venture capital sides, including roles at Google/DoubleClick and Battery Ventures. Most recently, Patel worked at Twitter as its VP of Product until June of this year. Today, he’s looking ahead to a startup of his own, offering only a […]

Bipul Sinha saw the early days of the latest ad tech era when he helped lead investment in ad verification firm DoubleVerify on behalf of Blumberg Capital in 2008.   In 2010, Sinha moved to Lightspeed Venture Partners (LSVP) where ads remain a focus and companies such as news aggregator Pulse, social ad platform MyLikes, and […]

Chris Moore is a partner with Silicon Valley-based Redpoint Ventures, a venture capital firm. As his bio states on the Redpoint website, he serves on the board of a variety of ad technology companies including BlueKai, eBureau (owners of TruSignal), Inadco and Intent Media. Moore led Redpoint’s past investments in companies such as Right Media […]

Andy Weissman is partner at Union Square Ventures (USV), a “venture captial firm focused on early-stage and start-up investing.” Weissman joined USV in October of 2011 after co-founding Betaworks. Weissman recently discussed his thoughts on ad tech and investment trends with AdExchanger. From an investment thesis perspective, what’s the biggest change for you since you […]

Seth Levine is a co-founder and managing director of Foundry Group, an early stage technology venture firm based in Boulder, Colorado. Levine recently discussed his firm and ad tech trends with AdExchanger. AdExchanger: I realize there’s still time, but how are we doing with your prediction for 2012: “the year of programatic guaranteed”? SETH LEVINE: […]

Kiran Hebbar is a General Partner at Valhalla Partners. As part of his responsibilities pertaining to his venture firms investments, he serves as a director on the boards of Adaptly, display ad marketplace Legolas Media and PlaceIQ among others. AdExchanger followed up on our conversation with Hebbar last year to get his views on industry […]

As founder and managing partner of early-stage investment firm Genacast Ventures, which was established in 2008, Gil Beyda has accredited himself well in a relatively short period of time. With prescient investments in Invite Media (bought by Google in 2010) and Demdex (acquired by Adobe in 2011), Beyda has been no stranger to the VC […]

Nobody was talking investment or tech bubble at Lowenstein Sandler‘s annual Venture CrushNY Event which took place in New York City’s Edison Ballroom today. The venture capital community came together for a discussion of its world as well as a review of several hot startups. Ed Zimmerman of law firm Lowenstein Sandler was emcee and […]

Steve Fletcher, managing director at boutique investment bank GCA Savvian, helped broker the Yahoo!/interclick deal and was lead financial adviser to interclick. Fletcher discussed the transaction and its particulars. AdExchanger.com: What are some of the key challenges of bringing together two public companies like Yahoo! and interclick? SF: It’s always difficult to combine two public […]

Jeff Crowe is Managing Partner of Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). NVP’s portfolio includes companies such as Admeld, Brand.net, Turn, Komli, Kayak and SocialVibe. AdExchanger.com: Recently it was announced that Google will buy NVP portfolio company Admeld pending regulatory approval. What intrigued you about Admeld initially? And, beyond a successful exit, what is it that Admeld […]