VentureBeat

Tumri, online advertising company that lets publishers choose the type of advertisers they want to run in a so-called AdPod on their Web sites, has raised a $10 million second round of funding.

Lehman Brothers Venture Partners led the round, which included existing investors Shasta Ventures and Accel Partners.

There’s a whole gaggle of new advertising networks, perhaps too many, but with merger and acquisition fever raging in this sector, it makes sense that investors double their bets in the hope their companies get snapped up by a Google, Yahoo or Microsoft or a handful of more traditional ad giants seeking to enter online world.

Last month, VentureBeat covered Mountain View, Calif.-based Tumri’s AdPod service which allows publishers to display targeted product ads with themes that are relevant for their own sites (see example below). Tumri’s network includes advertisers such as Wal-Mart, Sears and Zappos. Revenue is split between Tumri and the publisher on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-action (CPA) basis.

Tumri also added two VPs to its management team. David Kim comes from search engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier to lead business development. Sandeep Nawathe comes from supply chain management firm Amphire to lead engineering.

This latest round brings Tumri’s total funding to $16.5 million.

Tumri, an online ad network, today releases a service called Tumri Publisher to give publishers more control over ads displayed on their site.

Tumri Publisher allows users to create custom, branded ads called AdPods based on product category. For example, a blog about books could choose to only display book ads from Amazon.com. It also lets you create AdPods for specific merchants and price ranges.

AdPods display inventory from over one thousand merchants including Shopping.com and Overstock. Unlike some competitors, Tumri allows publishers to set specific rules about the types of ads they wish to display. For instance, Google AdSense lets you filter out specific competitors or advertisers but currently has no way to specify ads you’d like to include. Google has recently started testing “gadget ads” (see Niall Kennedy’s piece), but these don’t appear to give publishers as much control. There are several other ad widget companies, such as the less developed Boobox, doing something similar. Zlio, more advanced, also lets you make money from selling products through widget stores (our coverage here).

Tumri’s ads — such as the ones below — look more like product offers than contextual advertising. Tumri allows publishers to control ad look and feel and monitor performance of different types of ads. Lack of creative and editorial control is a drawback to popular solutions such as Google AdSense.

Tumri, based in Mountain View, gives publishers a 50 percent split of revenue it gets from advertisers. Publishers may make money if a customer clicks on an ad or, in other cases, only if they actually buy the product, depending on the arrangement (see how it works). The three-year old company has raised $6.5 million in a first round of financing from Shasta Ventures and Accel Partners.