Millennial Media raises additional $27.5 million investment funding
Mobile advertising agency, Millennial Media has raised an additional US$27.5 million in growth equity funding, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Charles River Ventures (CRV), and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) participating. This new investment brings the company’s equity funding to more than US$65 million.
The company is considered to be the largest independent mobile ad agency after larger rivals; AdMob and Quattro were brought by Google and Apple respectively.
Millennial Media is also planning to use the growth investment in part to build on its 2010 acquisition of TapMetrics, a mobile analytics company, with additional acquisitions in 2011. Additional investments will be made in the company’s international and platform lines of business.
According to Patrick Kerins, General Partner, NEA, Millennial Media continues to be one of their best-performing portfolio companies, and has achieved profitable results. The company has exceeded its revenue and EBITDA projections for ten consecutive quarters. As part of their growth equity strategy, they target companies like Millennial Media, as it has the seasoned management team, operational excellence and long-term vision to dominate the mobile advertising market.
The company’s US mobile ad network business reaches more than 85% of US mobile web users, serves more than 17 billion mobile ad impressions each month, and counts 18 of the top 25 Ad Age advertisers among its clients.
Millennial Media is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, has offices in New York, London, and San Francisco; with sales offices in Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta.
RIM looking to acquire m-advertising network
If sources are to be believed, RIM is anticipating acquiring a mobile advertising network. In fact, the company was recently in discussion with US-based mobile ad network Millennial Media about a prospective acquisition.
However, the concessions ended due to differences in the value of Millennial. Millennial also brokers ad sales to a group of other mobile ad networks.
According to sources, the recent sale prices carried by competitors AdMob and Quattro Wireless have encouraged Millennial to demand for US$ 400 million to US$ 500 million. RIM has been reluctant to pay such a price.
RIM executives are unwilling to pay up for Millennial, stating that Apple and Google overpaid for their mobile-advertising acquisitions.
MySpace launches ad-supported mobile service (USA)
Social networking site MySpace is launching a free mobile service supported by advertising. MySpace owner Fox Interactive Media unveiled a beta version of the new MySpace Mobile, which will offer users free content, tools and services previously available only to paid subscribers. Free services include the ability to send and receive MySpace messages and friend requests, comment on pictures and profiles, post bulletins, update blogs, find and search for friends, and view or change mood status. Mobile ad network Millennial Media will sell and manage ads on the site and other FIM properties, including custom sponsorship packages within MySpace and more traditional display-based ads with other FIM properties, such as IGN, FOXSports.com, AskMen and RottenTomatoes.com. IFIM will sell a limited number of charter sponsorships within MySpace’s new mobile site over the next several months and open all advertising inventory by the end of the calendar year. The service initially launches in the US, where MySpace works with the carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and Helio on a premium MySpace service. The new service will be available across all mobile networks. In Europe, MySpace has a partnership with Vodafone.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
