July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

With around 50 million users, Nigeria has the largest Internet market in Africa. Internet access and mobile phone usage are exploding thanks to a large youth population and an emerging economy, and Adsolut is ready and waiting to capitalize on this growth.

Adsolut launched today as the “admeld for Africa.” It is an ad network and management platform that helps web publishers more effectively reach their target audience and sell and manage their ads online.

“Nigeria has thousands of blogs and websites catering for every facet of human life,” said founder Morzook Biobaku in an interview. “There are the blogs but there are no advertisers, yet advertisers want to have their products on the net. This is where adsolut comes in; we will be the bridge between advertisers and web publishers. There is a huge market for online advertising in Nigeria and adsolut wants to pioneer the movement.”

Biobaku said advertisers in Africa struggle to find the right channels to promote their products, and Adsolut is a local, “home-grown” solution that makes it easier. The company not only provides a network, but also takes on an agency role by using actual marketing professionals to help customers identify and target the right audience. The company also monitors ads and provides analytics.

Adsolut is currently in the process of building its own ad servers. The company is raising a seed round on Angel List which will support building out the technology and growing the network of advertisers and publishers. Attracting venture capital is not easy in Africa and the cost of getting online is still high. Furthermore, there is not consistent electricity so startups have to rely on electric generators which are expensive. Biobaku said that while these factors increase overhead costs and slow growth, Nigeria is currently home to an Internet “craze” and the market is bubbling with opportunity.

There are other a few other homegrown ad networks that serve Nigeria (and Africa), including mobile advertising network Twinpine and South African Offer Forge. Adsolut currently has three employees and is based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Photo Credit: crashdburnd

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

No matter how great your your business is, monetization can be frustratingly elusive. But Skimlinks has raised a round of growth financing from Greycroft Partners to help you get there.

The technology converts digital content into affiliate links. Brands or publishers can then earn money through affiliate marketing without making much of an effort. The company’s SkimLinks product turns normal links into affiliate links, while SkimWords uses natural language processing to detect product references in the text and direct people to where they can buy them.

“We are the only technology in the world that can detect granular product references in content, in real time across multiple verticals, and link them accurately to the most relevant retailer of that product,” the company said on its site.

Skimlinks has a network of 140,000 active publishers and 17,000 affiliate programs. According to a statement issued this morning, Skimlinks generates seven-figure revenues each month from its network and processes 300 million clicks per month. Clients include Conde Nast, Gawker, AOL Europe, WordPress, Hearst Digital, Amazon, and eBay. The company anticipates it will drive $500 million of e-commerce sales globally in 2013.

The amount of this round is undisclosed, but the company says it will use the funds to build out its products and expand into Asia. Along with the funding announcement, SkimLinks’ Japanese-language website went live this morning.

Greycroft Partners led this round — its portfolio includes other ad tech and online publishing startups including Buddy Media, Klout, and the Huffington Post. A group of Japanese angel investors also participated, along with Forum Foundry and existing investors. Skimlinks previously raised $7.02 million, closing its second round of institutional financing in November 2011.

SkimLinks was founded in 2007. It has 55 employees, with headquarters in London and offices in San Francisco and New York. It will open operations in Asia this year.

Photo Credit: Shiraz Chakera/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Ad-tech startup Marin Software made its public debut this morning on the NYSE, netting a higher than expected price in early trading.

The company, which will trade under the symbol MRIN, sold 7.5 million shares at $14. It was initially expected to sell 7 million shares in the $11 -$13 price range but was revised at the last minute to reflect a growing demand. Thus far, trading has peaked at $19 per share (or 37 percent higher than its debut price) and is currently holding steady at around $17. At the opening price, Marin expects to raise $105 million, valuing the company at $475 million.

Marin helps advertisers and agencies manage and track paid search ad campaigns across Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, and other search engines. It’s annual revenues have steadily risen, which contributed to the stock’s strong opening. Also, Marin’s earlier admission that it wouldn’t be profitable in the foreseeable future doesn’t appear to have held it back. In 2011, the company reported revenues of $36.1 million at a loss of $17.4 million, and it was not profitable in 2012.

Marin Software is the first big ad-tech company to make an IPO in 2013, and is one of 17 tech IPO candidates to watch this year, as VentureBeat’s Christina Farr previously pointed out.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Facebook is taking the weight-of-the-world off Microsoft’s shoulders. Today, news came out that the Facebook officially bought Microsoft’s Atlas Solutions.

Back in December, rumors circulated that Facebook planned to acquire Atlas in an effort to build its own external advertising network. Microsoft acquired Atlas Solutions back in 2007 as part of its purchase of aQuantive for $6 billion. Microsoft was apparently interested in offloading the property, and Facebook was interested in buying it.

Today, the deal officially closed. Although the terms have not been disclosed, the price is estimated at under $100 million. Atlas Solutions offers a suite of tools for marketers to serve, track, and measure digital ad campaigns. It delivers billions of impressions every day across multiple channels.

“If marketers and agencies can get a holistic view of campaign performance, they will be able to do a much better job of making sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time,” said Brian Boland, Facebook’s director of product marketing in a blog post. “Atlas has built capabilities that allow for this kind of measurement, and enhancing these systems will give marketers a deeper understanding of effectiveness and lead to better digital advertising experiences for consumers.”

Both Facebook and Microsoft want to remain competitive against Google’s dominance in the ad-space. Microsoft is, in a sense, offloading the responsibility to Facebook, which will be better able to capitalize on advertising opportunities with its own network. E-marketer projects that Facebook will bring in nearly $2.7 billion in display advertising in 2013, as compared to Google’s $3.2 billion.

Right now, most advertisers connect to Facebook via a third party. An analysis in AdAge earlier this month said that with its own ad server, Facebook can better measure the effective of ad campaigns and open up more data to advertisers without exposing it to intermediaries. The social networking giant also has plans to develop Atlas into a stronger product.

“We plan to improve Atlas’s capabilities by investing in scaling its back-end measurement systems and enhancing its current suite of advertiser tools on desktop and mobile,” Boland said. “We will also work to improve the user interface and functionality with the goal of making Atlas the most effective, intuitive, and powerful ad serving, management and measurement platform in the industry.”

In the latest installment of the War of the Technology Titans, Facebook edges in on Google’s territory. Your move, Google. Read Facebook’s statement. 

Photo Credit: Francisco Diez/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Search advertising technology company Marin Software has filed a registration statement for an IPO with the Securities and Exchanges commission.

This is the first ad-tech company to go public in 2013, a year that could be chock-full of IPOs.

The number of shares for sale and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. But we do know that the company plans to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “MRIN.”

Marin helps advertisers and agencies manage and track paid search ad campaigns across Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu (China’s search behemoth), and other search sites. Traditionally focused on search, Marin has expanded into display advertising, social, and mobile, a strategic move given that according to a filing ”a substantial majority” of its customers use it to manage Google AdWords campaigns.

Marin Software founder and CEO Christopher Lien

A strong sign for investors is that annual revenues have steadily risen: Forbes reports that the company pulled in $42.5 million for the first nine months of 2012, up from $24.7 million in the comparable span of 2011. Marin may also benefit from the burgeoning interest in business-to-business startups.

“The chatter about enterprise startups is more a function of the fact that consumer startups look less appealing [to investors] more than anything else,” said CB Insights’ CEO Anand Sanwal in a recent interview. “Folk are saying now that enterprise is the place they should be playing.”

However, Marin has not yet reached profitability, which may knock investors’ confidence, particularly given Zynga’s and Groupon’s recent stock woes.

“We do not expect to be profitable in the foreseeable future, and we cannot be certain that we will be able to attain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis, or if we do, that we will sustain profitability,” Marin stated in a filing. 

For the entirety of 2011, Marin had revenues of $36.1 million and a loss of $17.4 million, and the company failed to book an annual net profit in 2012. In addition, the company admits in a filing that its usage-based pricing model “makes it difficult to accurately forecast revenues.”

VentureBeat predicted an IPO from the company in the first quarter of 2013; rumors have been circulating in the press for at least six months. In 2011, Marin brought on a CFO from Shutterfly, a sure sign that the company expected to go public in the near future.

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are acting as lead managers for the offering. UBS Securities and Stifel, Nicolaus & Company are acting as book-running managers, and Wells Fargo Securities is acting as a co-manager.

DataXu pulled in $27 million in funding today, proving that investors continue to see potential in the massively complicated world of ad-tech.

The Boston-based startup was founded by a group of MIT scientists who wrote the combinatorial language for NASA’s Mars mission. To commercialize the tech, the scientists brought in executives with digital media and consumer electronics expertise, who saw a huge opportunity in helping marketers to target their advertising.

DataXu started its life as a platform to help that helped marketers place their ads in real time ad exchanges — the company would take a cut of any media they bought. The company has found it can make more money by licensing software, which lets ad buyers make their own decisions.

The company provided a case-study to demonstrate how it worked with Adobe to use online display advertising to drive sales. DataXu claims its approach yielded a 60 percent increase in online sales with a 36 percent reduction in media costs.

The round of funding was led by Thomvest Ventures with participation from existing investors Atlas Venture, Flybridge Capital Partners and Menlo Ventures. DataXu has now raised $65 million.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

In the fast-moving world of advertising, online is the Wild Wild West, with brands, ad networks, startups, and investors eager to stake their claim.

The biggest, baddest ad tech company to roll into town today is AppNexus, which announced raising $75 million in its fourth round of funding.

AppNexus provides a customizable ad tech platform that businesses can use to build a differentiated ad network, trading desk, or custom exchange. The company has a large database of ad buyers and sellers and a real-time bidding exchange. Customers have access to global network as well as tools to optimize their campaigns and manage their ad inventory and the data it generates.

The platform is designed to be as flexible and customizable as possible to suit clients of all needs and sizes. In the past 12 months, AppNexus has managed approximately $700 million of advertising spend, almost tripled revenues, processed a peak of one million requests per second, and quintupled delivery to over 13 billion ads served to websites each day.

These numbers came in a statement issued this morning regarding the investment, which was led by Technology Crossover Ventures. Venrock and Tribeca Venture Partner also participated in this round. The money will be used to “create the next generation of innovations that will transform online advertising.” It brings AppNexus’ total funding to $140.5 million. Previous investors include an elite group of First Round Capital, Marc Andresseen and Ben Horowtiz, Ron Conway, and Khosla Ventures.

AppNexus is based in New York City. Read the press release.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Who says e-mail is dead? Advertising startup isocket has forged an agreement with MailChimp that lets publishers sell ads directly on e-mail newsletters, potentially turning old-school e-mail into a money maker.

Isocket simplifies the advertising process for publishers with its self-serve ad platform, which increases the number of direct ads that run on a website. For example, if Microsoft wants to buy an ad across a tech news website, they’d start with isocket’s self-serve platform, which would give them all the ad specs and rates.

Direct ads, of course, are more lucrative for publishers than ones that run through an ad network, and ultimately make them more money. Isocket’s platform also helps those publishers manage a larger number of ad clients, which enables them to spend less time keeping track of deals and more time making deals.

Now isocket’s self-serve ad functionality is available for email newsletters, as powered by email marketing client MailChimp. And while email may not seem like a powerful force in the age of social media, there are still roughly 188 billion messages sent each day from nearly 3 billion accounts.

“For us, offering publishers a way to sell direct ad through their email newsletters was a no brainer,” isocket founder and CEO John Ramey told VentureBeat.

Ramey said the email functionality will be available through all email marketing platforms, but those that use MailChimp will have a more simplified experience. That’s something that attracted lots of publishers to start using isocket in the first place.

The startup has a rather impressive list of clients already using its platform, including VentureBeat, AOL (as well as TechCrunch), Gawker, Mashable, Springwise, Break media, and the Cheezburger Network of sites. Ramey told me his company denies about 90 percent of publishers that apply to use the platform, with about 700 to 800 requests to join per month.

Founded in 2009, the Burlingame, Calif-based startup has previously raised an undisclosed round of funding from Jeff Clavier / SoftTech, Dave McClure / Founders Fund, Mike Hirshland of Resolute, Tim Draper, Blumberg Capital, David Cohen of TechStars, Quest VP, Accelerator Ventures, and Metamorphic Ventures.

Screenshot via isocket

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Namely founder Matt Straz

Turnover has always been a problem at top advertising agencies. But these days the designers and developers needed to create rich media campaigns are also being lured away from Madison Avenue by the booming New York tech scene.

“Retaining top folks is always a problem for agencies,” says digital media agency veteran Matt Straz. “Battling for talent with tech startups and that has added a whole new dimension to the talent crunch.”

So Straz has founded a new company, Namely, which hopes to use cloud computing and data analysis to help advertising agencies retain their key employees.

Venturebeat has learned that Namely just raised a $1 million seed round from some of the biggest names in New York’s ad-tech scene: folks like Mike Lazerow from Buddy Media, Michael Barrett from AdMeld, Michael Kassan and Wenda Harris Millard from MediaLink, Simulmedia’s Dave Morgan and CIA founder Chris Ingram.

“At some agencies there can be 30 percent annual turnover on the top accounts,” said Straz. “We’re building a really robust database in the cloud so that the decision makers at these companies can get an informed take on who they should pay to keep and when it’s ok to let a competitor poach.”

Although he won’t name any names, Straz says that several of the largest advertising agencies have already signed on and imported their employee statistics, meaning Namely has a better chance to avoid the cold start problem of having a service making recommendations based on very little data.

Straz, who sold his previous startup Pictela to AOL, says that he decided to avoid raising from traditional venture capitalists and took four months going door to door with people from his own industry. “It took a lot longer, but it was a lot more satisfying. There are kind of two worlds in New York, the flashy consumer tech and then the big world of ad-tech behind it.”

He has also decided to headquarter Namely in Brooklyn. “That’s where the creative class tends to live,” Straz noted. He’ll be joining Charlie O’Donnell, who yesterday launched a new venture fund to focus on the rising tech scene in Brooklyn. “I just hired a developer and you know who I was competing with? Facebook. But this guy picked Namely because we’re based in Williamsburg, and that’s a neighbourhood he loves.”