AdMob, a popular mobile advertising platform, has closed a 15.7 million Series C funding round led by Sequoia’s Growth Fund with participation from Accel Partners. The company says that it will use the money to help expand abroad in India, South Africa, and Europe.
The round is a strong vote of confidence from Sequoia, especially given the fact that the famous firm recently presented its portfolio company CEOs with a 56 Slide Presentation of Doom that forecast dire economic conditions in Silicon Valley for years to come.
AdMob has seen tremendous growth since its launch two years ago, and now bills itself as “the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace”. Mobile advertising is clearly going to be a huge market in the next few years as highspeed smartphones become more common (you can see our story on the network’s integrations with the iPhone here). Phones with geo-location abilities are especially exciting, as they could conceivably allow advertisers to target potential patrons as they pass their stores or enter a nearby parking lot.
AdMob will be competing in this still-fledgling space with ad networks from the likes of Google, Nokia, and Yahoo, as well as a number of startups.