Despite the challenges posed by the economy, some tech startups continue to get venture capital backing. BlueKai and Image Metrics are both announcing funding news Tuesday.
BlueKai, an online ad-targeting service provider, has secured a $10.5 million Series B, led by
Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investor
Redpoint Ventures.
BlueKai, based in Seattle, partners with data sellers to aggregate anonymous shopping and
research behaviors across the Internet. The data is then auctioned to
drive monetization in a way that the company describes as "privacy-friendly," while enabling buyers to
boost the quality and scale of online ad-targeting campaigns. The company's BlueKai Registry lets consumers see what marketers know about them, edit their online preferences and
gain rewards for charitable donations.
"The future of online advertising is driven by behavioral targeting, and
its effectiveness relies on data," says
Satya Patel, principal of
Battery Ventures, who is taking a seat on BlueKai's board.
"High-quality targeting data is so critical that the
online media industry is clearly moving toward purchasing data
separately from media," says Patel, who worked at Google Inc. and DoubleClick Inc. prior to becoming a venture capitalist. "BlueKai exploits this trend with a breakthrough
business model that creates an economy around the value of quality
data, and also establishes a consumer-friendly standard for collecting,
classifying and defining data."
Image Metrics, a Manchester, England, company that develops software for making computer-generated characters that appear in movies, TV shows and games, such as Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto IV" (pictured) and Harmonix's "Rock Band 2," has also
raised a Series B. The $6.5 million round was led by
Saffron Hill Ventures, the company's original investor. -
Mary Kathleen Flynn
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