AllThingsD » 24/7 Real Media

Simulmedia Raises $6 Million More for Web-Like TV Ads

Peter Kafka — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:26:46 +0000

Web ad pioneer Dave Morgan has rounded up more money for his move into TV: His Simulmedia has closed a $6 million funding round from previous investors Avalon Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Time Warner’s investment arm.

That brings Simulmedia’s total raise to some $27 million over three years. That money is going into Morgan’s take on “targeted” TV advertising, which promises to merge Web-style targeting with traditional TV ads.

There are lots of people chasing targeted TV ads, and to date none of them have gotten very far. Canoe Ventures, a consortium led by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and the rest of the cable industry, just imploded earlier this year.

The TV guys will probably get there, someday. But in the meantime, Morgan is trying a slightly less ambitious version that he says can work now.

Rather than trying to deliver customized ads to every TV viewer based on their individual set-top-box data, Simulmedia uses some set-top-box data (which it gets from providers like DirecTV, TiVo and AT&T) to try to find undervalued ad inventory. So, in theory, it can help an advertiser find a cheaper way to get in front of a specific audience it wants to reach.

If that sounds a bit like Web advertising, that makes sense. Morgan built two pioneering Internet ad companies — 24/7 Real Media and Tacoda, which were acquired by WPP and AOL — before tackling TV.

Simulmedia says it has run 200 campaigns for 24 brands since it pivoted to its current model (it had originally tried using the same technology to target TV advertising for TV programming), and Morgan says he is “very close to profitability.” This is the second time Morgan has funded the company with an inside round: The same group of investors put in about $9 million a year ago.

Web Ad Pioneer Dave Morgan Adapts Simulmedia To TV's Reality

Peter Kafka — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:57:20 +0000

The TV networks are spending the week telling advertisers to keep buying TV ads.

Great idea, says Dave Morgan.

If you pay attention to Web advertising but haven’t kept track of Morgan recently, his position might strike you as a bit odd, coming from a well-known Web entrepreneur who built and sold two big digital ad companies.

But Simulmedia, Morgan’s newest effort, has nothing to do with Web ads. Instead he’s helping TV advertisers buy the same TV ads they’ve always bought. He just says he can help them spend their money efficiently, using data from cable companies’ set-top boxes.

Simulmedia has been working on this for a couple of years, and originally focused on a relatively narrow slice of the TV ad market: TV networks advertising their own shows on other networks. But earlier this year the company changed strategies–you can go ahead and call it a pivot without being embarrassed–and is now targeting the entire $70 billion TV ad market.

Morgan raised another $10 million last week–an inside round from previous investors including Avalon Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Time Warner–which brings the company’s total funding to more than $20 million.

That’s a good reason to ask him to provide an update on his business, which he does in the video interview below. I’m particularly struck by the comments Morgan makes about adapting a go-go Web start-up mentality to accommodate the TV industry’s deliberate pace.

“I had some assumptions that there were things that had not happened in television because people didn’t understand the changes, and they were Luddites and didn’t want to change,” he says. ”The closer I’ve gotten into the marketplace, I realize they absolutely know what’s going on–they’ve made very calculated decisions.”

[ See post to watch video ]

The Top 10 Clean-Tech Companies

Colleen Debaise — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:00:34 +0000

Companies that make everything from solar panels to renewable-crude oil continue to be big draws for funding from the venture-capital community.

But a company that rewards consumers for recycling led The Wall Street Journal’s second-annual ranking of venture-backed clean-tech companies.

Recyclebank, which provides recycling-rewards programs in 29 states and the U.K., has had a growth spurt since its 2004 launch. In October, the New York-based company brought on Jonathan Hsu, former head of onliine ad firm 24/7 Real Media, as its chief executive.

Two solar-power firms, Suniva Inc. of Norcross, Ga., and eSolar Inc. of Burbank, Calif., came in second and third, respectively.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Microsoft Tries to Sell Ad Agency It Never Wanted

Peter Kafka — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:16:01 +0000

Microsoft acquired digital ad agency Razorfish two years ago as part of its $6 billion purchase of parent company aQuantive. The industry has been waiting for Redmond to part ways with the ad shop since then.

Now Razorfish is formally on the block: The Financial Times reports that Microsoft (MSFT) has hired Morgan Stanley to hawk the agency and suggests that French ad conglomerate Publicis Groupe could be a buyer. Then again, so could every other big ad holding company, including Omnicom (OMC) and WPP (WPPGY).

The FT throws out a value of $600-$700 million for Razorfish, down from the $800 million price tag that AdAge put on the shop last summer, which was the last time sales chatter heated up. At the time, the buyer was supposed to be WPP. Microsoft paid $6 billion for all of aQuantive in 2007.

Why has everyone been so convinced that Microsoft would sell something it bought in 2007? Because everyone thought that Microsoft never wanted Razorfish–it wanted the rest of aQuantive’s ad network business. And presumably what it really wanted was Doubleclick’s ad network business, but Google (GOOG) beat it out on that deal. Yahoo (YHOO) had already bought RightMedia and WPP bought 24/7 Real Media. (Boy, a lot of money was spent on ad networks back then! And not coincidentally, a flood of ad network start-ups flooded the market shortly after those transactions went through.)

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s own people have never tried particularly hard to argue that the company was committed to owning an ad agency. Though they did try to argue that owning one wasn’t a conflict with the online publishing business it keeps burning money on. Now that won’t be a problem.

[Image credit: g-hat]