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Southern California Ad Networks & Publishers

Oct 15, 2009

by estrategy

An internet advertising / publishing Renaissance is quietly happening in Southern California 10 years after the dot com bubble burst. These internet companies will have somewhere between $10-250M in annual revenue in 2009 and are great M&A / IPO candidates. The combined list of companies have raised in aggregate of well over $1B of capital and employ 2000+ people in Southern California. These companies will ultimately spawn off new entreprenuers when liquidity is realized for shareholders. Soon Southern California just might have have a sustainable ecosystem of investors and entrepreneurs to compete with regions like Silicon Valley and Boston. This list is ranked in order of capital raised from investors. SoCalTech.com was the source of the investment information.

Demand Media

1333 Second Street, Suite 100 Santa Monica CA 90401 www.demandmedia.com Demand Media owns and operates 1) a network of 65 destination websites 2) a content and social media marketplace connecting content creators, users and publishers on a mass scale and 3) the second largest domain name registrar. Most recently, Demand Media launched Livestrong.com in partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation.Total Funding: $355.00M Investors: 3i Ventures Generation Partners Goldman Sachs Lance Armstrong Foundation Oak Investment Partners Spectrum Equity Investors

Oversee.net

515 South Flower Street, Suite 4400 Los Angeles CA 90017 www.oversee.net Operates an advertising network, services for parked domain name holders, and a series of consumer focused web sites. The company uses search engine optimization and other techniques to increase revenue from parked domains and other web sites. Total Funding: $150M Investors: Oak Hill Capital Partners

Specific Media

4 Park Plaza Ste. 1900 Irvine CA 92614 www.specificmedia.com SpecificMEDIA is developing technology that helps online advertisers target audiences through advanced behavioral, contextual, geographic and demographic technologies. 200M Monthly Total Funding: $110M Investors: Enterprise Partners Francisco Partners Shepherd Ventures

Hulu

12312 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90065 www.hulu.com is currently the third largest video provider on the web. The site focuses exclusively on professional content and does not take on YouTube directly as a viral video destination. Hulu videos are played in their own embeddable branded player. Content from at least a dozen TV networks and two major film studios is promised. Initial distribution partners include AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. Total Funding $100M Investors: Providence Equity Partners, Disney, Fox.

Veoh

10180 Telesis Court Suite, San Diego, CA, 92121 www.veoh.com is an Internet TV service that gives viewers the power to easily discover, watch, and personalize their online viewing experience. Total Funding: $69.8M Investors: Intel, Adobe, Shelter, Spark, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner

Reach Local

21700 Oxnard Street, Suite 1600, Woodland Hills CA 91367 www.reachlocal.com Brings order to the fragmented local Internet by connecting advertisers, publishers, and creative solutions providers together on one platform. Wherever customers are online, ReachLocal helps businesses find them with the broadest reach of local digital media, a dedicated force of local Internet Marketing Consultants, and technology that continually optimizes results. Total Funding: $67M Investors: VantagePoint Venture Partners, Rho Capital Ventures, Galleon Special Opportunities Partners, LP

Ad Knowlegde

3003 Expositio 1st Floor Santa Monica CA, 90404, (Headquartered in Kansas City, Mo) www.adknowledge.com Performance-based advertising network that utilizes powerful predictive technology to connect advertisers with consumers across multiple channels, including email, search and social networks.Investors: Technology Crossover Ventures. Total Funding: $66.3M

Gorilla Nation

5140 W Goldleaf Circle Floor 3 Los Angeles CA 90056 www.gorillanation.com An online ad sales rep firm represent over 500 leading web publishers and offer integrated media and promotional programs to Fortune 500 brand advertisers. Total Funding: $50M Investors: Great Hill Partners

Rubicon Project

1925 S. Bundy Drive Los Angeles CA 90025 www.rubiconproject.com Yield Management Optimization platform, REVV for Publishers™, is engineered to accelerate revenue for premium Web publishers. Total Funding: $42M Investors: Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures and GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund

OpenX

Pasadena CA www.openx.com OpenX is the world's leading independent ad server for web publishers. OpenX offers a vast community of publishers comprehensive, customizable and free to use ad serving technology. The OpenX ad server empowers a community of more than 150,000 websites across the Internet with the ability to take control of their ads and maximize their ad revenue and relevance. The OpenX ad server products are translated into 25 languages, used in more than 100 countries around the world, and serve more than 300 billion ads each month.. Total Funding: $31M Investors: Accel Partners DAG Ventures First Round Capital Index Ventures Mangrove Capital Partners O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures Miller, Jonathan

Break

311 North Robertson Dr. Beverly Hills CA 90211 www.break.com Entertainment community for men. Break Media consists of wholly owned branded properties such as Break.com, Cage Potato, Chickipedia, Holy Taco, Wall Street Fighter, Screen Junkies and All Left Turns as well as a publisher network, the Break Media Network, that counts over 95 member sites.Total Funding: $21.4M Unknown Investors: Lions Gate Entertainment

Mahalo

902 Colorado Avenue Santa Monica CA 90401 www.mahalo.com Human-powered search engine where results are generated non-algorithmically by a team of profile builders who create pages for search terms. Mahalo includes the most appropriate hand found links and information about for about 10,000 unique queries. Total Funding: $21M Investors: Sequoia

Hydra

8800 Wilshire Blvd, 2nd Floor Beverly Hills CA 90211 www.hydranetwork.com Performance-based ad network that distributes cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and cost-per-lead (CPL) campaigns through online affiliates. Named by Inc 500 as the fastest growing advertising company in the U.S. in 2009.Total Funding:Unknown Investors: Unknown

Connexus

2141 Rosecrans Avenue, Suite 2020 El Segundo CA 90245 www.connexuscorp.com Connexus is an online marketer and pay-for-performance ad network. Result of the merger of Vendare Media and Netblue. Investors: Insight Venture Partners & Oak Investment Partners Total Funding: Unknown

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estrategy October 27, 2009

Just added Hulu and Veoh to the list.

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devora October 15, 2009

Wow, nice list! It's interesting to read what you have to say about ad networks and publishers in your blurb and comment.

By the way, the URL for #6 is actually hydranetwork.com ;)

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drogoff October 15, 2009

Great list. I am looking forward to seeing how these companies turn out.

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Ronjini October 15, 2009

Ad networks are the group of social networks. The market is already saturated and mobile ads haven't even really picked up yet. I'm scared to see what is going to happen to our already diminishing personal lives. Added value? or added noise?

estrategy October 15, 2009

Kind of a negative view don't you think? I am looking at it from a business perspective in trying to put Southern California on the map as THE place to want to start a new media / advertising company. More important to help our economy and help entrepreneurs with capital formation and job creation.

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