The mobile advertising market has seen an incredible amount of activity in the last year. In 2013 alone, the IAB estimates the industry was worth twenty billion dollars in revenues. However, in 2014, the industry has chosen not to focus on building inventory, but in fine tuning the mobile advertising experience for its customers. As a result, companies such as Twitter and Facebook, which make more in ads provided to mobile platforms than those seen on desktops, have invested more funds in technology, spurring the industry on and creating even more profit.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that companies such as xAd have grown quite popular. xAd is a mobile startup that specializes in serving advertisements for media specific to a user’s location. According to an article recently completed by Tech Crunch, many Venture Capital companies have a keen interest in investing in xAd, based in the success of their mobile advertisements. The corporation is already profitable and growing quickly; according to Dipanshu Sharma, xAd’s CEO, it already has several million dollars in the bank, and, therefore, wasn’t even in the market to generate more funding. However, with the increased interest in location based advertising, xAd has become more popular than ever.
As a result, the company recently raised fifty million dollars, through a combination of debt and equity financing led by Institutional Venture Partners, otherwise known as IVP. The funding had significant participation from the company’s existing investors Emergence Capital and Softbank Capital; in addition, Silicon Valley Bank contributed funds to the effort. The money raised from this endeavor only adds to the existing acquisition offers and approaches from other Venture Capitals.
The specific interest in xAd comes at their unique offerings to customers. Not only are they a leader in location based advertising, the company allows their customers to monitor the analytics behind how well the ads based in location work. This unique facet has afforded the company quite a bit of success. xAd was the first United States based mobile advertising technology platform to expand globally.