Media marketing firm Simulmedia has raised another $5 million in funding in an inside round from existing investors, the company confirmed today. The money comes from Time Warner Investments, Avalon Ventures, and Union Square Ventures, which together have put a total of about $32 million into the company since it was founded in 2009.
Simulmedia has built a platform that is designed to bring Internet-like targeting to the TV ad market. The company uses set-top box and other viewing data to determine which shows advertisers should run their TV spots against. Rather than having its clients spend huge amounts of money buying ads seen by large audiences watching highly rated shows, Simulmedia helps its customers identify programming that will come more cheaply but have the same demographic user profile. In particular, Simulmedia can help TV content producers themselves find similar audiences to market their shows against. Or it can tell agencies how to position their ad spots to most efficiently reach a target demographic of viewers.
The New York City-based startup was founded by ad veteran Dave Morgan, who had previously had success with Tacoda, which was sold to AOL in 2007, and Real Media. The company has seen tremendous growth over the past year, with revenue up 10x and the team doubling during that time.
This is the fifth bit of financing that Simulmedia has raised over the years, with none of those rounds bringing in more than $9 million. In fact, since its third round, the amount the company has taken on in subsequent deals has decreased. Morgan said that he prefers to raise small inside rounds as the company continues to grow, instead of doing a large mezzanine round. According to Morgan, doing so makes it easier to price the round and gives the company more options as it decides on future courses of action.