AppNexus Secures $50 Million In Growth Capital Financing to Fuel Continued Rapid Expansion

NEW YORK, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- AppNexus today announced that it has raised $50 million in Series C funding for its rapidly-growing real-time ad platform. AppNexus will use the funds to fuel further investment in its cutting-edge technology infrastructure, new product development, and continued global expansion.

AppNexus, based in New York City, provides clients including leading ad networks, demand-side platforms (DSPs) and other online advertising companies with single-point buying access to the major real-time ad exchange offerings like those available through Google and Microsoft, and to other major inventory aggregators.  In addition, AppNexus provides a comprehensive set of ad management capabilities for executing and optimizing both real-time and directly negotiated media buys.

Series C investors include all of AppNexus' Series B venture capital backers: Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners and First Round Capital.  Microsoft, a longstanding AppNexus client, also joins as an investor.  

Mike Tyrrell, a Partner at Venrock said, "The combination of a massive market opportunity with real-time display advertising, a high differentiated technology platform, and an experienced leadership team at a company which is already demonstrating exponential growth makes AppNexus the kind of company that Venrock has spent its past forty years backing."

"Microsoft has a longstanding history of partnering with innovative technology companies that support the growth of a broader ecosystem," said Rik van der Kooi, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Advertiser & Publisher Solutions group. "We view AppNexus as a clear leader in the emerging real-time bidding space. Deepening our relationship with AppNexus will accelerate the availability of real-time demand via the Microsoft Advertising Exchange offering, providing broader access to our ad inventory. We look forward to working with AppNexus to help evolve the display advertising market."

AppNexus is led by the pioneers of the original ad exchanges at Yahoo!'s Right Media and Google's DoubleClick, and today is one of the largest drivers of dollars into such marketplaces. The company has experienced dramatic growth since its founding three years ago with more than 120 ad networks in 12 countries using AppNexus' real-time ad platform, including eight of the top global 15.  AppNexus currently auctions more than four billion ads daily, constituting 676% year-over-year growth.  Recently, AppNexus complemented its two US-based data centers by opening a data center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to bring real-time bidding to the European Union and the Middle East.

"Real-time is real, and AppNexus has built the ad technology platform to power this exciting new market," said Brian O'Kelley, CEO, AppNexus. "Our clients, including premier ad networks and demand-side platforms, will have access to the world's best technology infrastructure for capitalizing in full on the real-time revolution, across display ads as well as emerging platforms like mobile."

Real-time bidding volume has ramped significantly over the past two years, increasing more than 600% in the past year alone, to billions of available ad impressions daily. AppNexus projects that more than 20 percent of online display advertising will be purchased via real-time bidding by 2012.  

ABOUT APPNEXUS

AppNexus is the real-time ad platform for global ad networks, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and other leading online advertising companies.  Led by the pioneers of the Web's original ad exchanges at Yahoo!'s Right Media and Google's DoubleClick, AppNexus offers a comprehensive suite of core infrastructure and ad technology capabilities including data management, optimization, APIs, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated media campaigns.  Overall, AppNexus empowers sophisticated companies to build, manage and optimize their entire display advertising businesses and provides single-point integration to the largest sources of inventory, including the major aggregators and exchanges.

Based in New York City, AppNexus is backed by an outstanding group of investors; including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, First Round Capital, Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners, Ron Conway, Khosla Ventures, and Microsoft. For more information, visit www.appnexus.com.

SOURCE AppNexus