Verve Mobile Raises $14M Series C For Location Based Mobile Ad Platform
Verve Mobile announced yesterday it had closed $14M in series C financing to continue building out a location based mobile advertising platform. Led by Nokia Growth Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and previous $7M venture financing contributor BlueRun Ventures, Verve Mobile has now raised $21M total according to TechCrunch.
eMarketer also revised it's outlook for US mobile ad spending upwards, "due in large part to the success of so-called 'native' ad formats like Facebook's mobile newsfeed ads and Twitter's Promoted Products," according to eMarketer's revision announcement. eMarketer said mobile ad spending in the US, which includes display, search, and messaging based ads targeted to either smartphones or tablets, will rise 180% in 2013 to $7.19B.
This is a huge increase from it's initial forecast of 80% year over year growth back in September, and is good news for Verve, and anyone else in the mobile advertising market - including advertisers and publishers alike.
"Verve's focus is combining big data, location-based services (LBS) and ad technologies to make mobile advertising work better for advertisers and publishers," says Tom MacIsaac, Verve Mobile CEO. "Nokia and Qualcomm are global leaders in mobile technology innovation and have important insights, assets, initiatives and relationships that can help Verve maintain its lead in location powered mobile advertising."
Verve has partnered with publishers, both national and local, to create inventory for advertisers looking to reach 'on-the-go' consumers. Verve's publishing network reaches 108 million monthly unique visitors, and has inventory up to 6 billion impressions.
Local publishers can even purchase additional inventory from national publishers through Verve's Ad Manager interface. And national publishers, like NBC, for example, can demand higher rates by selling their locally relevant content to brands looking to target prospects geographically. In total, Verve Mobile's content network covers 165 Designated Market Areas (DMA's).
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