Venture Capital into Ad technology reaches $580mn in 2008

从 The coffee shops of Mayfair: Advertising2.0 作者：PaulFisher

I have got some research done for a speech at today’s Ad:Tech conference to look at Global Investment into the online ad / technolgogy Category: I knew it was large but not trending to one billion dollars a year!  What’s even more interesting is that this is only the disclosed data, and some of the deals that I know would push the total higher still.

Interesting to see that Europe accounted for $258mn of this which is 45% of the total. This is remarkable because European VC typically only accounts for around 20% of the USA on an industry-wide basis.  This just shows the strength of the European market for Advertising models.

Rather predictably, Ad-Networks was the largest sub sector by volume and value: partially explained by the sector being a little "mature " for VCs now and the best plays will have obvious scale.

Our recent investment round into European local advertising player Qype was announced too late to qualify as first half investment.  But Qype has a very innovative business model and is far more than just a UGC review site. There’s been a lot of blog chat about Qype and I want to put forward our view in a forthcoming post.

I was also particularly interested to see five investments into companies who are measuring advertising effectiveness.  The great thing about the web is that it allows brands to quantitatively judge the success of campaigns.  We at Advent believe there is an exciting opportunity emerging for Advertisers to find out which half of their ad-budgets are being wasted.  We are very interested to see European companies tracking, measuring, analyzing, and quantifying online advertising effectiveness.

We’re also excited to see companies who are helping brands develop new forms of advertising, especially online short form content, but more about that in further announcements…

Below is a list of the businesses and the amounts. If I have time (something my post rate will show I don’t have lots of)  I’ll add a little more "colour" to the list.

Ad Exchange    $mm
AdJug                6.18
AdGent 007        5.3
ContextWeb       24.4
TargetSpot         8.6

Ad measurement                        $mm
Digital Revolution Technology         1.2
Vizu                                               3.5
VoloMedia                                      3.5
XPlusOne                                       16
Integrated Media Measurement       25

Ad network    $mm
AdScale                             7
Adconion                        64.79
Mochi Media                    10
IGA                                5
Broadband Enterprises     10
Demand media                N/D
DirectoryM                        6
Giant Realm                    5.5
Gigya                            9.5
Graspr                            2.5
Jivox                            10.8
RockYou                        35
SaysMe                           N/D
Tremor Media                N/D
Undertone Networks        1

Ad technology    $mm
Invidi Technologies      N/D
Ads Clicks                    3
Videoplaza                   0.5
Keybroker                    6.01
Coull                            N/D
OpenAds                      15.5
AdMeld                         5
Click Forensics              10
iBloks                           2.5
Invision                        30
Jobster                         7
Kiptronic                       3
MediaBank                    30
MediaBoost                   4.7
V Links                          2.8

Agency    $mm
Uniteam Communication    1.32
Bruce Dunlop & Associates    30
i-level                                90

Local Ads    $mm
Local Labs            N/D
Local Marketers    3
WebVisible           12

Mobile ads    $mm
AD.IQ                     2.5
Blyk                        3.61
Acuity Mobile          4.4
Ad Infuse                12
mSnap                    N/D
Ringleader Digital    6
Smaato                   3.4

Out of home advertising    $mm
Ocean                                11
Hanger Network                  10
JobDig                                5.3
SeeSaw Networks                3.5

(Advent Ventures conducted the research using data from Venturesource, RealDeals and proprietary research.)