Admeld today has announced a new funding round of $15 million dollars. The sell-side technology company has enjoyed considerable growth over the past twelve months, having quadrupled its customer base and established itself as the largest independent RTB platform globally (only beaten out by Google). Admeld has also built out, in the past twelve months, optimisation technology for mobile ad inventory, allowing publishers to manage yield across the mobile and display channels from one platform. The company is looking to expand globally and invest in further product development. In the European market, Admeld has added the following a number of publishers as new platform partners: The Daily Mail, Dennis Publishing, ITV, Future Publishing and The Independent (UK). The new investment round brings total funding to $30 million dollars. It's an indication that VC money is starting to move towards the publisher side, which should help European publishers better manage their automated channels.

Here's the press release in full:

New York, NY – August 2, 2010 – AdMeld (www.admeld.com), the technology platform that helps the world’s top publishers maximise their ad revenues, today announced it closed a $15 million Series C round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). Time Warner Investments and the company’s existing backers, Spark Capital and Foundry Group, also participated. The round brings AdMeld’s total financing to date to $30 million. Jeff Crowe, General Partner at NVP, will be joining the company’s Board of Directors.

“The addition of Norwest Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments to our already strong list of backers is testament to the strength of our model, our rock-solid value proposition, and the experience of our team,” said Michael Barrett, CEO, AdMeld. “This round of financing caps a period of extremely strong growth for the company. Over the past year, AdMeld has become the world’s largest, independent sell-side platform for Real Time Bidding (RTB), extended our optimisation capabilities into the mobile space, and quadrupled the size of our customer base.”

Hundreds of the world’s top online publishers use AdMeld’s technology, including recently-won clients The Daily Mail, Dennis Publishing, ITV, Future Publishing and The Independent (UK). AdMeld also counts Discovery Communications, IAC, News Corporation, Pandora, Thomson Reuters, Telegraaf Media Nederland, and World Wrestling Entertainment® as clients. In aggregate, the company optimises ads across more than 395 million unique users globally, including for premium publishers in Germany, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

“AdMeld has proven itself to be the leading sell-side platform,” said Jeff Crowe, General Partner, Norwest Venture Partners. “AdMeld's client list is unmatched, its technology delivers substantial benefits for both publishers and buyers, and the company continues to pursue innovative technologies that change the way digital ads are bought and sold at scale. I look forward to working with Michael and the AdMeld team to shape this quickly-evolving market.”

“AdMeld has outstanding potential to redefine the online advertising marketplace and we are excited to become investors in this innovative and fast-growing company,” said Rachel Lam, Senior Vice President, Time Warner Investments and Group Managing Director. “We seek to back companies, such as AdMeld, that can become important strategic partners for our operating divisions—AdMeld commands the technology, team and vision to help Time Warner’s online publishing groups maximise their value in the swiftly-changing online ad market.”

AdMeld’s dynamic yield optimisation technology is the most advanced in the industry. It processes more than 40 billion ad transactions per month, maximising the value of each impression while giving publishers unprecedented control over how it is sold, to whom and for how much. In addition, the platform leverages RTB to connect publishers with every major buyer (including Demand Side Platforms, ad networks and exchanges), new budgets, and higher CPMs. Lastly, the company offers an array of tools to give publishers deep insights into the value of their audiences and inventory, take advantage of new revenue opportunities, and protect their brands. AdMeld is a proud and active member of the Association of Online Publishers (UK), Online Publishers Association Europe, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

About AdMeld

Founded in 2007, AdMeld helps the world’s top publishers maximise ad revenues, and sell their inventory smarter, safer and more efficiently. The company’s dynamic yield optimisation technology connects with hundreds of sources of demand such as ad networks, exchanges and DSPs, and provides tools and analytics for publishers to better understand and monetise their audiences. Current AdMeld customers include Answers.com, AccuWeather, Daily Mail, Discovery Communications, FOX News, Hearst Television, IAC, New York Post, Telegraaf Media Nederland and more than 300 others worldwide. The company is headquartered in New York City with offices in San Francisco, London and Toronto. Visit www.admeld.com

About Norwest Venture Partners

Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a global venture and growth equity investment firm that manages more than $3.7 billion in capital. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, Mumbai and Bengaluru, India and Herzelia, Israel. NVP makes early to late stage venture and growth equity investments in U.S. and global companies across a wide range of sectors including: information technology, business services, financial services, infrastructure, technology enabled services and consumer. NVP has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 49 years and has funded over 450 companies since inception. For more information, please visit www.nvp.com

About Time Warner Investments

The Time Warner Investments group (www.timewarnerinvestments.com) targets non-control strategic investments that have a clear impact on Time Warner’s divisional operations and directly enhance the Company’s ability to meet specific strategic goals. Time Warner Inc., a global leader in media and entertainment with businesses in television networks, filmed entertainment and publishing, uses its industry-leading operating scale and brands to create, package and deliver high-quality content worldwide through multiple distribution outlets.