Lucid Commerce Raises $8 Million Series C Financing From Rho Ventures

SEATTLE, July 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Lucid Commerce, a TV targeting and measuring company, today announced it has raised $8 million in Series C financing. The financing round was led by Rho Ventures and supported by StarVest Partners, Positec USA Inc., as well as existing investors OVP Venture Partners and Greycroft Partners LLC. Lucid provides brand marketers and agencies with the proven ability to deliver against business goals, optimizing TV advertising investments by using a scientific testing methodology and the precise measurement of impact on sales across online, retail and telesales channels.

Lucid is able to pinpoint return on investment not previously available via the TV medium using the combination of efficient and automated tracking and highly precise audience targeting. Those specific targets are based on rich Buyometric portraits that are derived from more than 400 demographic, behavioral and psychographic attributes on both TV viewing audiences and advertisers' customers.

Lucid delivers these capabilities directly to advertisers through its wholly owned division, Proceed Media Group, a TV media agency that utilizes a proprietary technology platform to target and measure TV advertising. PMG has experienced triple-digit revenue growth during the past year by consistently producing superior returns on TV advertising for leading marketers. PMG's ability to precisely target linear TV and measure its impact across sales channels has earned them new clients and rapidly expanding media budgets.

"Lucid provides TV marketers with the media selection, accountability and ROI that marketers have grown accustomed to from their Internet buys; the company links ROI to the specifics of a marketer's media schedule. Lucid has an experienced management team that has proven they can solve one of the most challenging problems in advertising today," said Doug McCormick, venture partner at Rho Ventures. "Lucid's track record has shown they can deliver significant improvements to an advertiser's bottom line."

McCormick will join Lucid Commerce's board along with Medha Vedaprakash, principal of Rho, Laura B. Sachar, general partner of StarVest Partners, Lucinda Stewart, managing director of OVP Venture Partners, and Lynn Wunderman, founder and CEO of I-Behavior and its online division aCerno.

Lucid's management team includes CEO Tyson Roberts, one of the first employees at aQuantive, which revolutionized online advertising and sold to Microsoft for $6.6 billion, and CTO Brian Burdick, former CTO of AdECN, head of technology and product at Specific Media, and multiple leadership roles at Microsoft.

"Joining into a strategic partnership with Rho Ventures has been a great opportunity for us. The Rho partners are leaders in leveraging deep industry expertise and ground-breaking technologies to accelerate innovation," said Tyson Roberts, CEO of Lucid Commerce.

About Rho

Rho Ventures (www.rho.com) has a multi-stage investing strategy focused on high-growth companies in large markets. Rho Ventures' investments span new media, healthcare, IT, communications, energy technology and other disruptive technologies. Rho Ventures brings nearly 30 years of venture experience, combined with its partners' deep sector expertise and its far-reaching network to assist each portfolio company. This approach has allowed Rho to participate in the growth of some of today's most innovative and successful companies, including Active Power, Capstone Turbine, IntraLinks, MedImmune, ReachLocal, Shire Pharmaceuticals, and Tacoda. Rho Ventures is currently investing from Rho Ventures VI, a $510 million fund. The firm has offices in Palo Alto, Calif., New York and Montreal, with investment across the globe.

About Lucid Commerce

Lucid Commerce is an early stage company based in Seattle, WA. Its division Proceed Media Group (PMG) is a television media agency based in Seattle and New York. PMG applies sophisticated analytic techniques to cost-efficiently target more impressions on advertisers' best prospects. Using their cutting-edge technology platform, PMG is able to precision-target the TV audience and quantify the impact these targeted impressions are having on sales. This targeting leverages over 400 individual and household demographic and behavioral attributes. Through their revolutionary Buyometric targeting system, PMG has been able to decrease their clients' cost-per-sale by over 25% while predicting sales volumes through multiple channels with over 95% accuracy. The PMG team is made up of industry leading experts in media, technology, and data mining.

SOURCE Lucid Commerce