IN THE PRESS
Dow Jones VentureWire
April 22, 2008
NEA Deposits $30M More In MediaBank
Arwen Ungar
Dow Jones VentureWire (April 22, 2008) - With a new $30 million round of funding, New Enterprise Associates has more than tripled its investment in MediaBank LLC, a developer of software for order management and analytics for advertising companies.
The firm, which invested $10.5 million in July, was the sole investor in the Series D round. Peter Barris, a managing general partner at NEA, declined to provide a valuation for the round but said it was "definitely an up round."
Barris said there were other interested investors but the company and NEA decided to make the Series D an insider round.
Based in Chicago, MediaBank's flagship product is a platform designed to enable media buyers to manage media billing, tracking and advertising across all media including television, radio, Web and digital.
Other products include a Web analytics tool and a real-time financial exchange platform known as X/G that enables publishers and media properties to sell all types of media. X/G is still in development.
Brad Keywell, MediaBank's chief executive, said one of the company's major strengths is its ability to harness data and enable media buyers to be smarter about their purchases. "We are a workflow enabler," Keywell said. "[We] provide analytics that bring together cross-media data and overlay it over client level."
Barris, who also serves on the company's board, said NEA initially became interested in the investment because it had funded the founders' previous companies, InnerWorkings Inc., which is now publicly traded, and Echo Global Logistics Inc.
In addition to an experienced and familiar founding team, Barris said, the company was also appealing because of the continued emergence of digital media.
"We have familiarity with the model," Barris said. "We as a firm have made numerous investments in the digital media spaces, and it has become very clear to us that the industry is going through a revolution of sorts. In terms of all the players in the industry and the distribution channels, the status quo [is] being changed dramatically. That spells opportunity, we think."
In fact, NEA approached MediaBank about raising an additional round to accelerate the company's business plan, Barris said.
Keywell said the profitable company will use the new funds for continued growth. He added that MediaBank will look for opportunities to acquire relevant technology.
Barris said the firm didn't have specific expectations of how long the funds would last, but he said it is the last round the company needed for organic growth. Keywell said the firm previously raised a "substantial" amount of funding from individual investors.
While there are many companies that offer similar services, Barris said the competition is largely fragmented.
"There are lots of companies addressing various aspects...I don't think there are great markets that only have one player," Barris said. "We would expect that there will be plenty of competitors."
Competitors include online marketing firm ValueClick Inc.; publicly traded Mediaplex Inc., a provider of technology and services for marketers and advertisers; and Donovan Data Systems Inc.
About MediaBank, LLC
Privately-held Chicago-based MediaBank, LLC. is a leading provider of integrated procurement technology and advanced analytics to the advertising industry. MediaBank solutions allow for unprecedented cross-media analytics and intelligence through superior planning, buying, workflow and data warehousing tools. The cornerstone of MediaBank's solution is the MediaBank O|X platform, offering buying, financial, and workflow tools across all media types, complemented by the MediaBank I|Q database and data warehousing system. The MediaBank A|X platform provides advanced analytics and predictive modeling, and the MediaBank X|G platform offers a new and innovative way for media buying transactions to take place. For more information on MediaBank, visit: www.mbxg.com.
Contact:
Scott Goldberg
Edelman for MediaBank
312-297-7414
scott.goldberg@edelman.com
