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  • Chinese Mobile Search And Ad Firm Easou Technology Raises Third Round Of $12 Million

    Easou Technology, the Chinese mobile search and advertising firm, has raised $12 million in a third round of funding led by iD Tech Ventures and AXA Private Equity, reports ChinaVenture (via Pacific Epoch ). The three-year old company, which employs 500 staff, is using the investment for product research and development as well as customer service and marketing. Founder Wang Xi reported that in September the company broke even, with its key word and advertising business generating 5 million remminbi ($732,000) in revenue. The company raised $5 million in a second round of funding in August 2006, and an unidentified amount in January of the same year. Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
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  • Apptera Raises $10.5 Million To Expand Advertising Platform

    San Bruno, Calif.-based Apptera said it has raised $10.5 million in an undisclosed round of venture funding. Investors in the round include: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alloy Ventures, and Walden International. The money will go towards investing in the company's audio and visual mobile advertising network. Advertisers can use the company's ad platform and technology to insert audio advertisements within a call, and then follow-up with a visual ad. For instance, a person may call in to a movie phone service to hear when the latest movie is playing. An audio ad for a nearby restaurant may play, and if a person is interested, they can request a coupon or driving directions by text message. The company can also add an audio component to a text ad, which allows a person to click to call from an SMS. Henry Vogel, Apptera's president and CEO: "A lot of people are thinking about mobile advertising as the ability to send a SMS, or a WAP banner, but you are constrained in the richness and whether people have a data plan, but every device absolutely has a phone." Founded in 2001, Apptera already has customers such as AT&T's 1-800-YellowPages, AOL's Moviefone, MovieTickets.com, Bank of America's ATM locator, SaveMart supermarkets, MLB.com, RadioShack, GSI Commerce and SayNow's social music service. The company declined to say how much money it previously raised, and said it had fewer than 100 employees. Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download .
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  • MoJiva Raises First Round Of Funding; Appoints CEO

    MoJiva, a mobile advertising platform provider, has raised an undisclosed first round of funding from Bertelsmann's VC arm Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI). The New York City-based start-up, which launched in May 2008, has also appointed David Gwozdz CEO. Gwozdz, an original member of the team that founded online ad company DoubleClick, was most recently an SVP at behavioral ad company Phorm. MoJiva plans to use the investment to develop new products and to expand its sales and marketing staff. The company's main product, its "Self Service Ad Delivery Tooklit" is targeted at advertisers who want to create and manage their own mobile campaigns, and publishers who want to monetize their mobile content through ads. Mojiva also provides white label versions of its toolkit to ad agencies. The company claims that it has served over half a billion ads since its launch ( release ). Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now!
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  • Marketing Agency George P. Johnson Acquires MobilePromote And Juxt Interactive

    Marketing agency George P. Johnson has acquired online marketer Juxt Interactive and mobile marketing platform MobilePromote. Terms of both deals were not disclosed. MobilePromote enables marketers to integrate SMS and MMS into branded online portals. Juxt Interactive, which has done work for Coca-Cola, Adobe ( NSDQ: ADBE ), BMW and Toyota, has helped advertisers create online campaigns on Facebook and MySapce and created unique online competitions. Release . Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download .
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  • Mogreet Raises $5 Million To Fund Domestic And International Expansion

    Mogreet's CEO James Citron is trying his best to coin a new term. Yesterday, on a phone call, he enthusiastically opened the conversation by saying "Mogreet!," as a substitution for "hello." It's unclear if the saying will take off, but Citron's convinced that he's found the modern-day version of a greeting card. Citron: "We saw these giant spikes happening with lots of text messages being sent around special occasions and we asked: 'Isn't there away to create a premium way to communicate around the occasions?'" The Mogreet is a video text message that delivers greetings, such as "Happy Birthday," "Happy New Years," "Merry Christmas" and "I'm sorry." A recent spike in traffic happened on election day, following Barack Obama's victory. Citron said one of the most popular greetings was a short clip of Obama declaring, "Yes We Can." Users can send the clips to others via text message. A link in the text, takes people to a landing page to watch the video. Each texts costs 49 cents or 99 cents, depending on the content. Today, the Venice, Calif.-based company is announcing that it has secured $5 million in a second round of capital. New investors include: Ascend Ventures, Black Diamond Ventures, and Spyglass Ventures. Previous investor DFJ Frontier also participated. The company will use the money to obtain more content and expand internationally, including Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Citron wouldn't provide any figures on how popular the service is, but said that 25 percent of the users are repeat customers and they have a library of several thousand greetings. In the near-term, the company will release apps for the iPhone and Android, and is experimenting with its business models, such as ad-supported messages and subscription models. Citron expects the round of funding to take the company to cash-flow break even. Citron: "We were fully...
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  • MoVoxx Raises First Round For SMS Advertising Platform

    MoVoxx , a Santa Monica, Calif.-based company that helps brands and agencies integrate ads into SMS campaigns, has raised an undisclosed amount in a first round of funding. The investment group includes: Greycroft Partners, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital and BV Capital. Founded in September 2006, MoVoxx claims its publishing network already includes 60 million impressions a month, and that in the last year, it has run campaigns for a number of familiar national brands. MoVoxx said it began delivering its publishing partners' SMS traffic at no cost in October, which is a sign of the company's volume. Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board.
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  • Access 360 Media Raises $8 Million In Second Round

    Venice, Calif.-based Access 360 Media has raised $8 million in a second round led by Mission Ventures. Bessemer Venture Partners, which led the company's first round of $4.25 million, joined the latest round as well. The company creates marketing programs that target young adults spanning across mobile, online and in-store. Release . Register for Future of Business Media: http://fobm2008.eventbrite.com
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  • AdMob Closes $15.7 Million In Third Round And Is Cash-Flow Positive

    The recession and AdMob haven't been formally introduced it seems. The mobile ad firm just closed $15.7 million in a third round of funding and says it has become cash-flow positive. The funding was led by Sequoia Capital's Growth Fund with Accel Partners also participating. Sequoia also led first $4 million round of funding and Accel led in the company's second round of $15 million. AdMob has now raised a total of $34.7 million in three rounds in about two years. The new pool of money is being used to recruit sales and other staff in markets that have grown faster than expected like India and South Africa. AdMob currently has about 80 employees (half of which are engineers) and expects to surpass 100 by the end of the first quarter in 2009. Its business model calls for up to 150 employees by the end of 2009. More investment will be made in Western Europe, Japan and the company's platform including targeting and ad-serving algorithms. A spokesman said the company is effectively doubling down and gearing up to prepare for competition from the likes of AOL ( NYSE: TWX ) and Microsoft ( NSDQ: MSFT ). It's a strategy that runs contrary to what Sequoia told portfolio companies at a doom-and-gloom presentation last week where it urged companies to cut spending. Still, it's worth noting that Sequoia's stake in this round comes from its new nearly $1 billion "growth fund," which is designed to help later-stage companies maintain growth in a tumultuous economy. Plus, mobile advertising is still in its infancy. While mobile ad requests and placements are rising, prices remain relatively low. For instance, the mobile advertising market is growing, but currently in the U.S., it only amounts to an $800 million industry, which works out to be just about .4 percent of the entire advertising pie, according to analyst Chetan Sharma. Related Mobile Ad Firm AdMob Gets $15 Million In Second Round Funding Admob Gets Series A Funding @ Mobile NW: Mobile...
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  • Chinese Mobile Ad Firm Madhouse Gets Funding From Nokia's VC Arm

    Madhouse, the Chinese mobile marketing and advertising startup, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Nokia's $250 million VC arm Nokia ( NYSE: NOK ) Growth Partners. This is the VC firm's first deal in the mainland. The Shanghai-based company received $8 million in its second round last year. Some more details here . Related MadHouse Raises $8 Million In Second Round Funding Our mobile application for Blackberry and other Smartphones brings you the latest headlines when you're on the go. Go here to download .
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  • @ Mobile NW: VC Tom Huseby Offers Measured View Of The Economy; Downturn Won't Benefit Wireless

    Tom Huseby, a venture capitalist with SeaPoint Ventures , who focuses on investing in wireless companies, shared his thoughts this morning at Mobile Northwest 2008 in Seattle about the economy, and offered a more measured view of how it is affecting venture capital. He said things like the stock market, bank failures and even the memo distributed by Sequoia Capital two weeks ago , which told its portfolio companies to brace for a deep economic downturn, are inflicting undue fear on the start-up community. Last week, he said his mother called from Florida to give him her regards. "She must have thought I was in the midst of total chaos and doom and gloom, but really, I was too busy to notice, other than seeing my net worth diminish. Who would have thought early-stage VC was one of the safer investments? Who would have thought it was better than mortgages?...It's better because no one expects to get money out of it for a long while. We are equity driven..No one borrows money to build a venture fund." Huseby called the "Sequoia Panic Notes," which were paired with a visual of a grave stone with the message R.I.P.: Good Times, "hypocrisy and hearsay." On follow-up, he revised the words to "hyperbole and histrionic." He added while they were spreading a negative message, he successfully conducted a capital call and committed to funding a new startup. "Capital continues to flow." Still, he said there will be an impact. VC's will be less likely to connect the dots and see a company's potential. Anything that was easy, is gone. "It's gone. You won't get a lot of people getting a second round and a third. It's going to be hard. Hope is diminished." On the wireless industry specifically, he said: "The general downturn won't be good for anything. There's nothing that's counter cyclical. I don't think people will buy more games, or spend more on their phones. They are going to...
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  • Mobile Ad Inventory Won't Meet Demand As Brands Cut Back On Mobile Ad Buys

    Interest in mobile advertising is up, but inventory is not be keeping pace with demand, a trend that may only increase as we head towards a recession. Already, evidence is surfacing that big brands are cutting back on their mobile ad buys, which will make AdMob's job more difficult since it already doesn't have enough ad inventory to fill every request coming from publishers. AdMob has been closing the gap slowly, but it's still not able to fill all of its ad requests. For instance, in the U.S., AdMob served 1.79 billion ads last month, but had requests for 1.99 billion, and globally, it served 4.53 billion ads compared to 5.07 billion requests. As a caveat, AdMob said sometimes it chooses not to send ads. "AdMob also has certain minimum performance thresholds and limits ads served to low-performing inventory, which also can negatively affect fill rate," a spokesman said. Despite this gap, AdMob's inventory is still growing month-over-month, and it is serving three times as many ads today than it did a year ago. That may give it a chance to catch-up as demand tapers. On a global basis, it served 21 percent more ads in September compared to the prior month, and yet ad requests from publishers looking to monetize their mobile offerings were essentially flat, dropping .8 percent. However, there's fear that there will be fewer ads to serve going forward. Some brands are cutting so-called "experimental" ad budgets, which would include mobile. Chrysler, which is being hit especially hard from the widening economic disaster, has cut mobile and other new media ad buys in half, WSJ reports . Even with more frequent reporting coming out, the data just isn't sufficient enough to justify ad spends for some companies, particularly those desperately needing advertising that works and translates into sales. "We won't experiment in a lot of things that are fun to have. All of our dollars have to go to hitting in-market shoppers with...
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  • MobUI Launches To Help Media Companies Go Mobile; Buys Action Engine

    MobUI , a company founded by former Action Engine employees, has decided to buy the assets of its former employer to create applications and mobile Web experiences on new mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and Android. In August, Action Engine mysteriously laid off its employees and closed its doors, saying it was seeking buyers for its mobile platform, which allowed applications to get ported to multiple platforms, such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Java and Brew. Before Action Engine started having issues, John Burry left the company to start MobUI with the mission to help media companies quickly build apps and mobile experiences on even newer platforms, such as the iPhone. Burry, who is MobUI's CEO, said his company grew quickly gaining the two customers in the first two weeks. But Burry said they realized they weren't going to be able to focus on a single platform—that companies who built something for the iPhone would want to expand to other platforms. Burry: "We purchased Action Engine because we had a dependency on it." That included one of MobUI's early customers, which was also using Action Engine. MobUI bought Action Engine's assets on Sept. 15, and hired a core set of engineers in order to keep the platform going. MobUI raises funding: To fund the company's beginnings and buy Action Engine, Burry said they raised an undisclosed amount of capital from GlobalNET Mobile Solutions , a wireless application services provider in Latin America, which is also one of MobUI's first customers. Burry said GobalNET is interested in both companies so it can better expand internationally in the U.S., Asia and Europe. MobUI can be pronounced "Mob-U.I." or "Mo-BUI." Explaining Action Engine's demise: Action Engine's sudden closure wasn't as mysterious as you would think, Burry said. The company, which had a long list of big-name customers, such as AOL ( NYSE: TWX ), The Wall Street Journal.com, MarketWatch...
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