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Collective Media secures funding

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collectivemedia.pngCollective Media has closed a Series A round of funding led by Greycroft Partners, in conjunction with iNovia Capital. Collective Media’s online advertising network reaches 120 million unique users monthly on a wide selection of established Websites, including the largest aggregation of online news channels.

Collective Media will utilize these funds to enhance its proprietary ad network platform. Collective leverages audience targeting and optimization tools to increase the value of both top-tier, branded inventory and brand advertising. The platform features sophisticated tracking management and reporting technology. The capital will also be used to support the company’s rapid growth by increasing resources in its national sales, account management, and advertising operations.

Originally posted on October 23, 2007 @ 10:03 pm

BrightRoll secures $5 million in venture capital funding

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brightroll.pngBrightRoll, Inc. has secured $5 million in Series B funding from Adams Street Capital, KPG Ventures and, existing investor, TRUE Ventures. This brings the company’s total venture funding to $6 million since it launched in July 2006.

BrightRoll helps leading agencies, representing brands such as Walmart, Hewlett-Packard and Sony Pictures, launch and scale video campaigns across the industry’s leading publishers. The one-year-old start-up will use the capital to continue to grow its agency and publisher relationships, as well as accelerate product development.

BrightRoll can execute video campaigns across more than 50% of the top 100 online media properties in the United States. The average BrightRoll
video campaign reaches over 50 million unique users over a six week period. BrightRoll is built entirely on proprietary video ad serving, targeting and optimization technology. To date, BrightRoll has served over 1 billion advertisements on over 100 publisher sites.

Originally posted on October 23, 2007 @ 12:45 pm

Mochi Media launches MochiAds to help independent game developers monetize games

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mochiads.pngMochi Media announced the public launch of MochiAds, an online games ad network connecting advertisers with independent game developers looking to monetize and share their creations.

The MochiAds network already supports over 1,000 game developers, providing them with opportunities to make money by inserting around-game advertising into their games. The ads show as games are discovered and virally distributed across blogs, social networks and other sites by the estimated 237 million consumers who play online games. Bloons, a popular game on the network, received 7,754,288 ad impressions across approximately 26,160 sites and 217 countries and territories last month. The viral nature of game distribution enables developers to be rewarded regardless of the website on which the games are played.

There are two types of advertisements, pre-game or inter-level, which are viewed as the game is loading or during natural breaks in game play. The ad-serving technology allows developers flexibility over where ads show on a per-domain basis, and the ability to remove them at any time. Unlike sponsorships and licenses, MochiAds does not bind game developers with contractual agreements. Developers can join or leave the network at any time, but are incentivized to stay with attractive benefits such as free game hosting and a growing range of distribution deals with sites such as Hi5 and RockYou Games.

Earlier, Mochi Media received $4 million in financing from Accel Partners, the same firm behind Facebook and mobile advertising network AdMob.

Originally posted on October 16, 2007 @ 4:45 pm

YuMe secures $9 million funding

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yume.pngYuMe, an advertising network created and optimized for broadband video, announced that it has secured $9 million in venture funding. The current round, the company’s second, includes follow-on investments by Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners and BV Capital, as well as new participation from DAG Ventures.

“As marketers spend unprecedented and ever-increasing amounts on online video advertising, they rightly expect to be able to leverage the full potential of the Internet for ad targeting, flexibility, and customization, rather than settling for run-of-site buys and one-size-fits-all formats,” said Jayant Kadambi, CEO of YuMe.

Originally posted on October 16, 2007 @ 10:50 am

Podaddies secures $1 million funding

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podaddies.pngPodaddies, a new online video advertising company, has closed its first round of angel funding of $1 million. The funding was led by The Band of Angels and The Angels Forum, as well as former executives from other companies. The funding will be used to continue the growth of the company this fall, add staff and execute the vision of founder and CEO Nate Pagel.

Podaddies ensures that targeted ads will be able to play, track and pay whenever and wherever the media is consumed. Using the Podaddies ad network, advertisers can reach highly desirable markets they’ve been unable to reach while video publishers can track and monetize their video content on web pages and after it’s downloaded, shared and distributed.

Originally posted on October 8, 2007 @ 10:34 am