AdMob, a popular mobile advertising platform, has closed a 15.7 million Series C funding round led by Sequoia’s Growth Fund with participation from Accel Partners. The company says that it will use the money to help expand abroad in India, South Africa, and Europe.
The round is a strong vote of confidence from Sequoia, especially given the fact that the famous firm recently presented its portfolio company CEOs with a 56 Slide Presentation of Doom that forecast dire economic conditions in Silicon Valley for years to come.
AdMob has seen tremendous growth since its launch two years ago, and now bills itself as “the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace”. Mobile advertising is clearly going to be a huge market in the next few years as highspeed smartphones become more common (you can see our story on the network’s integrations with the iPhone here). Phones with geo-location abilities are especially exciting, as they could conceivably allow advertisers to target potential patrons as they pass their stores or enter a nearby parking lot.
AdMob will be competing in this still-fledgling space with ad networks from the likes of Google, Nokia, and Yahoo, as well as a number of startups.
“strong vote of confidence from Sequoia” or a cya for a bad investment – am is running on a novelty plateau.
wow, those sequoia partners have some balls, making half their portfolio companies fire their staff, and then turn around and fund ad mob with 15.7 million, a company that by all rights should be profitable enough at this point to be self-sustaining; fairly irresponsible move on sequoia’s part wouldn’t you say?
right… if their model reflected reality the 15.7 should be an exit for sv. no, it’s sv hedging that mobile ads will bank in a down economy. (because it is greenfield)
I thought companies were supposed to be having a hard time getting money? What happened to that theory?
http://www.SchoolShift.com
No one said you had to go through school alone.
insider trading – racketeering – conspiracy aka bubble.
The Honorable
JudgeLocator.com
Yes, they should invest in the time honored tradition of domain squatting.
When was the last time YOU searched for a judge? How about your MOM?
the jury is in do we have a verdict. yes we do your honor. we the jury in the above and titled action find the defendant JudgeLocator not guilty of domain squatting. his possession of a “strategic” network of properties proves that this man plays no games and has a relentless passion for entrepreneurialism, execution, and success.
We do find defendant Eric of phantom hating. This court hereby sentences eric to 2 years of formal out patient closet case therapy.
ally ally in come free, come out ,come out where ever you are.
There will be a day when all court cases are solved online, by a jury of our online peers. Radical transparency is rampant. I am sorry that i am that chosen one that wants to put government waste and bureacracy to sleep.
ChangeLocator.com- it’s a com’in
Admob’s advertising platform is a joke. They only focus on the long tail – what’s the point of advertising other apps on my iphone apps and then they asked me to advertise on their network to gain more traffic…it’s BS…it just cancels out one another.
next will be “context interstitials” – start an app; ad; app starts – look up a contact; ad; contact info displays – view a message; ad; message displays – respond to a message; ad; response gets sent – make a call; ad; call goes through…etc
sorry, but, ads don’t belong on these devices, in these contexts. sometimes these are last resort communications enablers. it is fundamentally inappropriate for mobile to become an advertising playground.
i see the point of “free mobile service” (all services: calls, text, web, etc.) in exchange for ads. but, if one is paying for the services? so, let’s see – one pays a monthly fee, with huge surcharges if one goes over one’s pre-agreed plan rate, AND one has to endure ads……
hmm, to me the math does not ADd up on this one. i may be wrong but, honestly, this smacks of a place where the FCC might *consider* regulating.
Here’s a video I did with AdMob a while back: http://www.fast...dvertising-wave — they certainly seem to be the real deal and they have cool ads for iPhone apps, which are white hot right now.
robert, robert, robert….the best you could come up with is unsurprisingly one of your videos. peripherally associated with the post, by means of being how founder omar hamoui landed series a for admob. with fratboy coverage of other topics…not really that informative on their business model or whether it makes sense or not. nor, does it add any insight in to why sc decided to double dip.
ads for apps to buy, within apps you’ve already bought??? isn’t that a bit like being required to read a pamphlet on how a suppository will make your life better while you’re sitting on the toilet with an enema tube up your bum?
advertisers today are not really that savvy w/re to how to monetize the Internet, let alone, mobile. they are jumping at mobile because a) it’s relatively new and b) they think it is another broadcast/print type medium where the consumer is *forced* to accept advertising.
a 5% lift on ctr w/initial campaign? what’s the mortality graph look like? a +x% yield initially is not difficult for any advertising “gimmick” to illustrate. much like a good restaurant, it is being able to go back week after week, month after month and taste *consistency* that makes or breaks the establishment.
nice try but really, imho, an irrelevant self-serving contribution to the discussion. when you have something to substantiate them being “the real deal” please come back…
“ads for apps to buy, within apps you’ve already bought??? ”
Ads in paid apps = bad idea.
Ads in free apps = good idea.
hahah. . . insider round . . . w/ valuation set by an existing insider . . .
usually not a good sign for the company as the entrepreneurs could have gotten a higher valuation somewhere else but didnt have the option to.
Out of curiosity – why would it be a problem to raise money twice from the same investor?
not twice from the same investor . . . but LEAD twice by the same investor . . . big difference!
We’re on a roll. Thanks for all your support (wink) TC.
Funny to see all these extremely negative posts every time there’s a posting about Admob… what’s all the beef about the company? It’s like someone out there is determined to bring down the company… by posting vile comments on TechCrunch.
Quantity vs. Quality. Nice round, but don’t blow it on expansion, fix your platform. Chasing a high impression count will only make your silly investors happy. AdMob keeps bragging about its 50 billion impressions, but too bad it is running on a pay per click model. The click thru rate is probably sub 1 percent. CTRs are inherently low on mobile devices, but AdMob’s non-contextual, spam-like ad display method makes it even worse. In short, grow revenue by improving CTR (quality) instead of expanding (quantity).
Jason, smart phones do not help AdMob. Smart phones run a browser that serve web pages with traditional web ads.
CTR on mobile devices are higher than on PC. One og the main reason fo that is that there are fever links to click on on a mobile page.
On mobile CTR is between 3% to 5%, sometimes even higher.
Way to talk out of both sides of your mouth….
Sequoia – What about that statement you made about no more capital will be available, cut burn rates… I bet Adbrite and Jive employees are pretty pissed to hear about this!
At least its good to know that AdMob will be around for at least a while, while we start integrating their ads into our iPhone app, lol.
I wonder what will happen when the existing ad players catch up (ie, Google)
OMG I just re-read my comment… the grammar is pretty bad (even for comments) LOL