Vurve Destealthing: Advertising On Autopilot For Small Businesses

If you’re a big company and you need a little software help managing online advertising campaigns, you go to Omniture or a competitor. But if you’re running a small store and are only spending a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a month across Google, Facebook and other self serve platforms, there are far fewer options available to you. That’s where Vurve comes in, and they are coming out of a small private beta period today.

The company, which raised a $1.2 million venture round last year, is run by Amit Kumar. Kumar was previously Director of Product at Yahoo, and VP Product at ad startup Dapper prior to being acquired by Yahoo. He knows advertising.

The company addresses the complications of online marketing – 75% of small businesses would rather do taxes than deal with online advertising, says Microsoft. Vurve makes it much simpler. There are easy to use tools and analytics to auto-create and place ads, and then make changes based on what works.

Vurve isn’t for everyone – you must spend a minimum of $200/month to use the service. And there’s also a maximum spend of $10,000 per month. Above that, you’re too big for them and they want to stay focused on the small guys. Still, it’s a $7 billion market, says the company.

For now they’re only working with shops using the Shopify or Yahoo Shopping platforms, Over time they’ll expand to other platforms, and possibly allow a direct connection for non-platform shops as well. On the advertising side, Vurve has preferred API access with Google and Facebook.