Adknowledge, which bills itself as the operator of the world’s largest privately held Internet advertising network, has raised $45 million in funding, an SEC filing reveals.
Update: skip that, they’ve raised $200 million.
This isn’t the first time the company has raised a monster round – Adknowledge secured $48 million in funding from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) back in 2006.
According to the filing, the equity round wasn’t in relation with an acquisition or merger, which rules out that the funding was raised in relation to the company’s recent purchase of SocialMedia.com’s ad network.
We’ve contacted the company for more information on the financing. From what I can gather, TCV invested again, with JMI Equity participating as well.
According to the filing, certain proceeds from the round will be used to repurchase securities from existing shareholders, including Adknowledge CEO Scott Lynn, President Brett Brewer and an unnamed affiliate of Will Griffith, General Partner at Technology Crossover Ventures.
Founded in 2004, Adknowledge employs over 300 employees and has revenues of $300 million, according to its website. It’s been quite acquisitive over the past few years, as you can tell from the list of bought companies on CrunchBase.
Its most recent notable recruitment was the hiring of former Yahoo chief data officer Usama Fayyad, who advises Adknowledge in its quest to build what it refers to as an “Amazon-like recommendation engine” for online ads.
Headquartered in Kansas City, Adknowledge has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Ft. Myers, New York, and international offices in the United Kingdom and Australia.