Grows Customer Base 500% in Six Months, Opens UK Office and Data Center

NEW YORK – AdMeld (www.admeld.com), the leader in ad network optimization for premium publishers,  announced it closed an $8 million round of Series B funding led by Spark Capital and Foundry Group. The funding, which AdMeld will use to accelerate its sales and product development efforts, caps a period of strong momentum for the company. Over the past six months, AdMeld’s customer base has grown five-fold and it expanded into Europe by opening a London-based office and data center.

Currently more than 65 premium online publishers use AdMeld’s technology to increase ad revenues and reduce operating costs, including Discovery Communications, FOX News, The Huffington Post, IAC, Thomson Reuters, and World Wrestling Entertainment®.

“The response to our solution has been extraordinary,” said Michael Barrett, CEO, AdMeld. “Our technology solves a very real problem for publishers and demand for it has only increased as ad networks and exchanges have proliferated. Closing this round of funding means we can focus on solidifying our market leadership among premium publishers, evolving our core product, and completing development on some exciting new products for release in the Fall. We’re also pleased to be building a presence in the UK with the opening of our sales office and data center in London.”

“We’re delighted with AdMeld’s early success serving some of the world’s top web publishers,” said Seth Levine, Managing Director, Foundry Group. “Their vision is built on a strong technical foundation and a deep understanding of the challenges large publishers face in maximizing the value of their ad inventories. This investment will enable them to push forward on their current growth trajectory while continuing to deliver innovative solutions that deliver substantive results.”

AdMeld’s technology maximizes publishers’ revenues by dynamically selecting the most lucrative mix of ads across hundreds of ad networks and exchanges. AdMeld customers typically see an increase in revenues from remnant inventory between 30% and 300%. In addition, AdMeld provides its customers with centralized network performance reporting, unique brand protection tools such as FireMeld, and a range of white-glove services.

About AdMeld

AdMeld (www.admeld.com) enables premium online publishers to maximize their revenue from ad networks and minimize the risks and complexities of working with them. AdMeld’s optimization technology is designed to generate the highest possible yield from each impression, and its suite of management and reporting tools deliver publishers a high level of transparency and control. Founded in 2007 by Benjamin Barokas and Brian Adams, AdMeld is led by Michael Barrett, an experienced leader of premium new media companies. Major investors include Spark Capital and Foundry Group.

About Foundry Group

Foundry Group is a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage information technology, Internet, and software startups. In addition to providing the necessary venture capital to get a company up and running, Foundry Group is committed to leveraging their experience in starting and growing companies, expertise in the technology industry, and network of relationships to help great entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies. Foundry Group is based in Boulder, Colorado, and invests in companies located across the United States. For more information, visit www.foundrygroup.com.

About Spark Capital

Spark Capital is a venture fund based in Boston, Mass. with investments focused on the conflux of the media, entertainment and technology industries. Over the last decade, Spark has been instrumental in the development of new markets and market leaders, such as Twitter, Akamai Technologies, thePlatform and Novatel Wireless. The Spark team includes former executives of major entertainment, media, and technology companies, such as IAC, Sony, Time Warner, Blockbuster, Lionsgate, Apple and Microsoft. With this deep experience and $622 million under management, Spark Capital provides world-class entrepreneurs and revolutionary companies with the resources to succeed in today’s marketplace. To learn more, visit http://www.sparkcapital.com.

NEW YORK – Medialets, the leading analytics and ad technology platform for next-generation mobile applications, has announced that they have closed a $4 million Series A financing round led by investor Foundry Group, with participation from DFJ Gotham and Bobby Yazdani, early investor in Google.

Founded in June 2008, Medialets is the most widely deployed rich media advertising and analytics platform for mobile applications built for iPhone and Android, with support for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm Pre devices coming this year. The company develops technologies that enable publishers to measure their audience and monetize their applications through advertising and allow brands to leverage all of the capabilities unique to these devices into advertisements in a completely measurable environment, whether a user is on- or offline.

“Medialets entered the market at the inception of the new generation of the mobile application space, and we are proud to have been able to help foster and grow the market by providing tools and support to the developer community. Over the past year, Medialets has become the trusted partner to over 1,000 leading developers. Through this investment, we’ll focus on significantly enhancing the platform they use to gain a competitive edge and continue to win market share,” said Eric Litman, Chairman and CEO of Medialets. “We’ve accomplished a great deal in a short period of time, and are thrilled to now bring in partners who are just as passionate about the business as we are.”

Medialets launched on July 11th, 2008, the same day as Apple’s App Store, has been installed over 60 million times across over 15 million unique devices to date, and measures usage in many of the top 20 highest downloaded applications on the iPhone platform based upon data released by Apple in April 2009. On the measurement side, Medialets primarily works with large developers and media publishers who look to the company’s analytics product, Medialytics, as a business intelligence tool to help them make informed decisions around improving app strategy and performance. Medialets does not collect any personally identifiable information from users. The data gathered from the analytics product is anonymized and applied to improve the advertising experience and targeting capabilities for advertisers.

The Medialets ad platform solves a core set of challenges successful publishers and developers face when deploying a mobile application. Medialets’ ad technology makes it possible to target and serve rich media ads to millions of smartphone users worldwide immediately, whether those ads are sold in-house or come from a third party. The company’s unique ad formats let brands and agencies create engaging ads that deliver the power of a branded application with the immediate distribution of an ad. Publishers add Medialets’ analytics code to their application and Medialets provides the infrastructure on the server side for aggregating and reporting on usage, as well as for reliably delivering ads into enabled applications. The rich media ads can include video, animation, sound and other advanced functionality.

“Although this is a very young sector, we believe that Medialets has the management team, experience and traction in the market to be the clear leader in the space,” said Seth Levine, partner at Foundry Group. “We look forward to working closely with Eric and his team to solidify Medialets’ lead in the market and continue to innovate and push the boundaries around what is possible in mobile advertising.”

For more information about Medialets, please visit www.medialets.com.

About Medialets

Medialets is a New York City-based rich media advertising and analytics platform for native applications on devices such as iPhone and Android. Medialets works with agencies and brands to define and deploy innovative ad campaigns that tap into all of the capabilities of the iPhone. Medialytics, Medialets’ free analytics and reporting solution, is the leading analytics and advertising solution for the world’s most downloaded iPhone applications. Medialets is a privately-held company with offices in New York, NY and San Francisco, CA. Email us at connect@medialets.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/medialets.

About Foundry Group

Foundry Group is a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage information technology, Internet, and software startups. In addition to providing the necessary venture capital to get a company up and running, Foundry Group is committed to leveraging their experience in starting and growing companies, expertise in the technology industry, and network of relationships to help great entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies. Foundry Group is based in Boulder, Colorado, and invests in companies located across the United States. For more information, visit www.foundrygroup.com.

About DFJ Gotham

DFJ Gotham Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology companies primarily in the Greater New York Region and other parts of the Eastern Seaboard. Since its first investment in 2000, DFJ Gotham Ventures has backed over 20 companies spanning a wide array of technology sectors. DFJ Gotham Ventures partners with extraordinary teams of entrepreneurs to build strong and successful businesses that make a huge impact in their industries. DFJ Gotham Ventures takes pride in being an active partner, leveraging its experience, knowledge and relationships to provide substantial value to its portfolio companies. DFJ Gotham Ventures is proud to have backed such category leaders as Massive (acquired by MSFT), XOsoft (acquired by CA), Q-Link (acquired by Adobe), Mimeo.com and ContextWeb, among many others. For more information, please visit www.dfjgotham.com.

About Bobby Yazdani

Bobby Yazdani is the founder and CEO of Saba. He founded Saba in 1997. Today, Saba, with over $100M in profitable revenue is headquartered in Redwood Shores, Calif., is the premier global provider of strategic human capital management. Saba’s people platform are used by more than 17 million people worldwide. Prior to founding Saba, Bobby held various senior R&D management positions at Oracle Corporation. He has successfully mentored and invested in many early stage start-ups including Clearspring, Dropbox, Google, HotPrints, Salesforce.com, Social Gaming Network, Webs.com and Masimo. Bobby has a BA in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.

- Lijit Networks, Inc. Secures $7.1 Million Series C Investment Round Led by Foundry Group – Lijit Networks, Inc. (www.lijit.com), a company that provides search-powered applications for both individual online publishers and online publisher networks, announced today that it has closed a $7.1M series C round of financing, led by Foundry Group. Existing investors, Boulder Ventures and Colorado Fund I, managed by High Country Venture, also participated in the round. Lijit will use the proceeds from this financing to launch its search-powered ad network, which empowers publishers to sell their own search ad inventory, as well as to expand its offices and employee base.

- YuMe names online media veteran Michael Mathieu as CEO – Mathieu has joined as CEO as the company begins global expansion and growth and heightens its focus on building new relationships with advertising agencies and publishers. Co–founder and former CEO Jayant Kadambi will take on a new role as President and will remain a member of YuMe’s Board of Directors.

- Useful Networks acquires KnowledgeWhere, location-based mobile games and advertising leader: leading enablers of compelling location-based services (LBS) for mobile phones, announces today the acquisition of Canada-based KnowledgeWhere, a premier provider of location-aware mobile games, location-based advertising (LBA) and developer-enablement programs.