Email Advertising Startup LiveIntent Raises $20M More

LiveIntent, a startup that provides tools for advertising in email newsletters and alerts, is announcing that it has raised $20 million in Series C funding.

The company launched at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in 2010, though at the time its goal was helping publishers “create meaningful connections on social networks.” Now it offers an ad exchange for real-time, automated buying and selling of ads in email. (Its website declares, “Email is no longer about sending email,” and you can see a sample ad to the left.)

I asked CEO Matt Keiser via email how LiveIntent fits into the broader email marketing landscape, he replied, “We do not plan to fit in [see what he did there?], we are changing [the] landscape of email marketing with real time programmatic buying and selling.”

The company says that it reaches more than 55 million consumers each month while working with brands like La Quinta, Kraft, Chrysler, as well as publishers like The Weather Channel, Hearst, and AOL (which owns TechCrunch). It also says that it has tripled revenue and doubled its workforce in the past year.

The plan for 2014, Keiser said, to continue growing and “leveraging big data and artificial intelligence to deliver timely targeted ads.”

“Since every commercial entity is becoming a publisher in their own right, the market is only getting bigger,” he added.

The Series C was disclosed in part through a regulatory filing, but the filing didn’t show that the round had closed, the total size of the round, or who was investing. The new funding was led by Bullpen Capital with additional money from Alpha Capital, Valor Capital, and Brazilian investors VR.

LiveIntent has now raised more than $32 million in funding.