One of the largest untapped markets in the advertising space is the local mobile sector, with a market currently estimated at $213M and growing to exceed $2.025B by 2014, according to the Kelsey Group.
Stealth startup xAD has its sights set directly on the segment and today announced it’s bringing itself out of silence to announce some key milestones and new funding. In a press release issued this morning, the company announced a $4M funding round led by Emergence Capital Partners, a leading venture firm known for its investments in key tech players such as Salesforce.com, aQuantive and Doubleclick. The company, which says it’s already profitable, will use the additional capital to expand its technology platform, scale its management team, and increase its footprint in the local mobile advertising sector.
xAD has developed a variety of mobile search algorithms, and has successfully applied this knowledge to unlock the potential of the local mobile market. The company’s patent-pending mobile optimization technology identifies who, what, and where an end user is, and serves the most relevant advertising based on that information. Publishers and advertisers benefit from xAD’s platform, which is already the largest combined network with more than one million local and national performance-based advertisers. The company said it currently serves more than 200 million local search ad-requests per month and is growing by over 20 percent per month.
“xAD has built a successful business by generating higher revenues for local mobile applications than what the industry is used to,” said Dipanshu “D” Sharma, founder and CEO of xAD. “Emergence Capital provides unique experience to our business with repeat successes in advertising technology, making them the ideal partner for us.”
While many mobile ad-networks can easily drill down to the hyper-local level, none have focused solely on the segment like xAD is aiming to do. They’re correct in saying the local mobile advertising market is largely untapped, but it’s primarily because small business owners and brands — especially in less tech-savvy regions of the US — are still largely unaware and intimidated by the thought of mobile marketing and advertising.