Giant Realm has raised $3.5 million to expand its entertainment web site for young male adults.
William Morris Agency, Comcast Interactive Capital, and Edison Venture Fund.
The company says it reaches 3.75 million unique visitors a month, most of them in the 16-year-old to 34-year-old male age group. This group spends a lot of money but is elusive when it comes to advertising because young males are watching less and less TV.
What Giant Realm has to compete with are young male enthusiast entertainment sites such as IGN, which is owned by Fox, as well as GameSpot, Heavy.com, and UGO. Like IGN, Giant Realm tries to go beyond gaming, in much the same way that Glam Media goes after young women by aggregating fashion-related sites. It says comScore data shows it ranks in the top ten on video game information.
Giant Realm is run by CEO James Green, a veteran of Disney and Pixar as well as a variety of start-ups, and Keith Kane, an ad sales executive and youth marketing expert from Alloy Media & Marketing.
Comcast Interactive Capital led the most recent round, with Edison Venture Fund and William Morris participating. The company will use the money to expand its online publisher group as well as sales and marketing. Advertisers include Hewlett-Packard, Sony Pictures, NBC, Scion, and Microsoft.
As part of the investment, Peter Rokkos and David B. Horowitz of Comcast Interactive Capital, have been appointed to Giant Realm’s board.