AdMob raises $12.5M from DFJ Growth Fund, Northgate

The Deal, Jan. 29, 2009

Money keeps pouring into advertising network startups, especially in the mobile world. The latest to score a significant round is AdMob Inc., which today announced a $12.5 million round from Draper Fisher Jurvetson's Growth Fund and Northgate Capital.

The funding is an extension of the company's Series C, bringing the total raised in the round to $28.2 million and AdMob's aggregate funding to $47.2 million. The company's previous backers include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners.

AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui told us a while back that he had been running a mobile social network called Photo Chatter prior to founding AdMob. He was having trouble getting users to sign up for the service so he offered to pay a mobile publisher one cent per click to advertise on the site. When it worked better than the existing ad solutions, he realized others would want to take advantage of that, so he brokered an ad deal for that same publisher and AdMob was born.

Since then, the company has seen significant success and developed some compelling offerings, including some interesting ad tracking features for the iPhone. AdMob said the latest funding will be used to expand worldwide operations, boost investments in its mobile technology platform, grow its offerings to publishers and advertisers and increase the size of its sales and business development teams.

The AdMob deal follows other mobile ad deals, inlcuding a $10.5 million round for Apptera Inc. and an $8.25 million round for Transpera Inc., both announced in November. -- Olaf de Senerpont Domis