Mobile advertising startup Metaresolver is launching today, and like a number of other companies emerging in recent months, it’s tackling what its founders see as the big problem holding back mobile ads — accurate audience targeting.
The company was founded by Seamus McAteer (CEO), previously co-founder of comScore-acquired mobile data startup M:Metrics, and Mike Rowehl (CTO), the first engineer at Google-acquired AdMob. It spun out of Churn Labs, the startup generator that was created by Rowehl and AdMob founder Omar Hamoui. (In fact, Rowehl and Hamoui’s decisions to focus full-time on specific startups led to Churn’s shutdown.)
McAteer tells me Metaresolver isn’t trying to create divide the audience into segments like the just-launched AdMobius, but instead working on the step before that. The startup works with digital agencies to provide “clean, trustworthy data” that can serve as “the foundation” for smarter media buying.
Every ad impression already comes with some significant data, McAteer says, including the viewer’s latitude-longitude and device, but it’s often inaccurate.
“At least somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the time, that data is categorically incorrect,” he says. “There are a lot of lat-longs resolving to a corn field in Kansas. A lot of vetting needs to be done with the data.”
So Metaresolver tries to provide that vetting, taking the basic data and cleaning it up. If you look beyond mobile advertising, McAteer says there’s “nothing new” about what Metaresolver is doing: “It’s tried and testing marketing media intelligence. We’re starting with really a clean, foundational data set, and we’re coupling that with programmatic media buying.”
Earlier this year, Metaresolver raised a seed round led by Baseline Ventures and Harrison Metal Capital, with participation from Lerer Ventures, Eniac Ventures and iHatch Management. (Metaresolver’s CrunchBase profile says it was a $1.85 million, but I’m still trying to confirm that number with the company.) The company says it has been working with beta customers since May.
Metaresolver powers smarter media buying on mobile platforms through tighter targeting using proprietary data.
Baseline Ventures is a seed-stage capital firm founded by Steve Anderson in late 2006. Bringing his diverse experience from eBay, Microsoft, Kleiner Perkins, Starbucks and Digital Equipment Corporation, Steve founded Baseline to in order to help entrepreneurs build and grow their ideas into companies. Since its inception, Baseline is proud to have backed over 60 founding teams in promising software and web companies including Rupture (acquired by EA), Mixer Labs (acquired by Twitter), Heroku (acquired by Salesforce), Versley (acquired...
Harrison Metal invests in early stage, technology driven businesses led by exceptional entrepreneurs. They look for unique combinations of leaders and ideas seeking to: Create extraordinary value in the daily lives of users Compete in large markets in transition Capture a share of value created through a sound economic model Build a team of creative, results driven people
Seamus McAteer is an entrepreneur and technology analyst with over 20 years experience building companies in the online media and mobile technology sectors. He joined Millennial Media as SVP of Data and Analytics through the acquisition of Metaresovler where he was co-founder and CEO. Metaresolver built a media buying platform that supported tighter targeting of mobile advertising through the use of proprietary analytics. Seamus defined the market for mobile media intelligence. He founded M:Metrics, and served as chief product architect...
Mike is an entrepreneur, website scalability engineer, founder of the Silicon Valley Mobile Monday group, and one of the organizers of the Mobile 2.0 conference.
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