Realtime ad bidding network AppNexus today announced that it raised $50 million in a Series C financing. Investors include Microsoft, Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners and First Round Capital. The round brings the total capital raised by AppNexus since its founding to $65.5 million. The company first raised an angel round in 2007 from Ron Conway, Marc Andreesen, Ben Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and First Round Capital.
AppNexus is based in New York City, and was founded by Brian O’Kelley, who was also a co-founder of Right Media. (Yahoo purchased Right Media in 2007 at an $850 million valuation).
AppNexus calls itself a realtime bidding platform for ad networks. It allows 120 ad networks to interface with the big online display advertising exchanges such as Google Ad Exchange (formerly DoubleClick Ad Exchange), Microsoft Media Network, Admeld, OpenX, and AdECN, helping the ad networks bid for display ad spots across the Internet. “We exist to drive demand to the ad exchanges,” says O’Kelley.
More than 4 billion ad impressions are served through AppNexus every day, up from zero two years ago. AppNexus is a software company that builds the interfaces and management tools for the ad networks to interface with the ad exchanges, ultimately allowing advertisers to better optimize for cost-per-clicks, cost-per-impressions, and other metrics.
While he won’t disclose specific details, CEO O’Kelley tells me, “We’ve gone crazy on the revenue side in the past year.” He’s also been hiring, going from 23 employees at the beginning of the year to about 65 today.
AppNexus is the most advanced platform for buying real-time online advertising. AppNexus’s clients include the largest ad networks and online advertisers. AppNexus offers a proprietary gateway to premier ad exchanges and ad inventory aggregators, and cloud computing capabilities for unrivaled scalability. AppNexus is based in New York City. The company is backed by investors including Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners, and First Round Capital. More information can be obtained by visiting AppNexus online at http://www.appnexus.com.
Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
Venrock is a leading venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, CA; New York, NY; and Cambridge, MA. Originally established as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, Venrock continues an eight-decade tradition of partnering with entrepreneurs to establish successful, enduring companies. With a primary focus on technology, healthcare, and energy, portfolio companies have included Adify, Adnexus Therapeutics, Apple Computer, Athenahealth, Centocor, Check Point Software, DoubleClick, Gilead Sciences, Idec Pharmaceuticals, Illumina, Intel, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Sirna Therapeutics, StrataCom,...
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