SocialMedia, the social ad company, is raising what could be $20M
SocialMedia, a San Francisco company that places ads on social networks and other areas where there’s a social component for advertisers to tap, has hired Savvian investment bank to raise what could be a $20 million second round, we’re hearing.
I wrote about SocialMedia last month, and described the evolution of its offerings including its new FriendRank technology to help place socially relevant ads.
Apparently, so much interest from venture capitalists has since hit the company that it has decided to hire Savvian to manage the incoming. Savvian helped manage the fundraising process of Federated Media, another new ad company that raised a large round. Savvian’s partners Rich Jasen and John Labros are the bankers involved, and are said to understand this sector.
Typically a company at this stage doesn’t like to sell more than 20 percent of its shares in a round, and we’re hearing SocialMedia is of this mindset. If you do some quick math, that means it could be looking to raise money at a $60 million value before the investment ($80 million post). From what I hear, the company hasn’t set a valuation yet, but plans to wrap up funding by end of summer.
The company raised a small amount of capital last year. The company told me earlier it sees a large opportunity and wants to hire a bigger sales organiztion to help it move beyond serving ads within applications on Facebook and leading social networks. It wants to serve ads on other platforms where advertising can be made social, such as FriendFeed or Wordpress or on the iPhone.
A slew of new companies have arisen to serve ads and analytics on the iPhone, which is notable, because the precise location information, and potential to tap into communciations between people afford a whole swath of new social advertising potential.
We at VentureBeat have invited companies like Skydeck (which tracks your communication patterns on your phone) and new iPhone ad company MediaLets to MobileBeat, our conference next week, for demonstrations of their technology and their findings of the market thus far. Other companies like Pinch Media, which provides iPhone tracking stats and analytics, and Apploop, which offers repurposed CPC ads on iPhone apps, are emerging.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
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