Company description::
Richer Is Better: Eyeblaster Announces $8 Million in VC Funding
Rich Media Technology Provider Celebrates Record Breaking 2003
January 26, 2004 (New York) – Eyeblaster, the leader in rich media advertising delivery and management, today announced the closing of an $8 million round of venture capital funding from New York-based Insight Venture Partners. The additional funding will be used to expand Eyeblaster’s operations, allowing the company to move into new growth markets with solutions that leverage its skills and assets into emerging opportunities.
“Rich media advertising, and Eyeblaster in particular, has seen tremendous growth over the past few quarters,” said Deven Parekh, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners, who will join Eyeblaster’s Board of Directors. He continued, “Eyeblaster’s strong management team and long term business plan has positioned them for tremendous growth and makes them an ideal company for us to invest in and support.”
“Securing this round of funding will allow us to move forward with our aggressive growth plans for 2004 and beyond,” said Gal Trifon, Eyeblaster’s CEO, “and extend our leadership in the rich media advertising market as it matures and grows more competitive.” Trifon continued, “Insight Venture Partners has a tremendous history of bringing value beyond the influx of capital to the companies they invest in, and we are excited to move forward with their support and expertise.”
In addition, the company has released an overview of its 2003 year-end performance. The leader in branded rich media impressions for 2003, according to AdRelevance, saw revenue and impression levels grow steadily and outpace the rich media market growth averages.
Over the course of 2003, Eyeblaster surpassed the online advertising and rich media industry averages with high double-digit growth in revenues and profits. The company nearly doubled the size of its staff, expanded its senior management team and opened four offices worldwide, including Hamburg, Germany, Chicago, San Francisco and Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Comparing year-over-year data, Eyeblaster served more than 1,400 total campaigns, with more than 600 campaigns running in the fourth quarter alone, marking a 171% increase over the same period in 2002. Additionally, the company delivered more than 2 billion total impressions, a 335% increase over 2002 levels. Financially, revenues for the company increased 87.5% with a similar jump in profits over the past year.
Other accomplishments during 2003 include the release of three new versions of the Platform including new formats and features such as the Eyeblaster Brand Test, Powered by Dynamic Logic; increased the capacity of standard ad units to up to one megabyte with the company’s SmartStream technology; the introduction of the 100K Polite Banner, which eliminates disruption to the user’s web surfing experience, and an Expandable Banner with improved functionality, combining to breathe new life into the banner ad category. By the end of 2003, banner ad units comprised more than 38% of all ads being served by the company, representing almost 500% growth within those formats.
Working closely with agencies, publishers and creative shops to increase format and feature adoption, clients running multiple format campaigns increased 250% over 2002. Eyeblaster has also expanded its client roster by almost 40%, working with 400 top advertising agencies, and adding more each day.
About Eyeblaster
Eyeblaster is the global leader in rich media ad technology and the provider of the Eyeblaster Rich Media Platform. Eyeblaster provides online advertisers and publishers with the first single technology solution to create, deliver, and manage all rich media formats through one online administrative platform. The Eyeblaster platform is the only product that gives the user 100% control without relying on a ‘middleman vendor’ anywhere in the campaign process. Eyeblaster is the only rich media technology provider accepted system-wide by AOL, MSN and Yahoo, and its customers include over 400 advertising agencies and 1,000 publishers/networks worldwide. Eyeblaster, Inc. was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in New York, with offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Hamburg, Tokyo, Sao Paolo, and Sydney and product development facilities in Israel. Learn more at www.eyeblaster.com.
About Insight Venture Partners
Insight Venture Partners, with approximately $1 billion in funds under management, is the leading venture capital firm specializing in enterprise software companies. Insight invests in entrepreneurial companies developing technology-based solutions for the corporate enterprise. Headquartered in New York, Insight has taken a global approach to e-commerce investing in a market where speed, domain expertise, and the ability to execute are the foundations of success. More information on Insight is available at http://www.insightpartners.com.
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