Location Is Everything, As Mobile Ad Startup xAd Raises $50M Led By IVP
Summary
xAd, a mobile ad startup that specialises in serving media specific to a user’s location, is today announcing $50 million in funding — significant not only for the size of the round, but also for the context around the money coming into its coffers. xAd is already profitable, growing fast, wasn’t in the market for raising financing (it has “several million dollars in the bank already,” its CEO says), and doesn’t even have any plans for what it will do with it. What xAd is offering that it says makes it different and better is a technology platform that not only lets companies tailor ads to location, but then monitor the analytics behind how well those campaigns work. “We get very excited about companies using tech rather than sales teams to grow,” Dennis Phelps, a general partner at IVP who is joining xAd’s board, told me. “We have something that is special, and we are solving real problems and we want to go for it.” On the other side, he acknowledges that there are a lot of companies out there that are looking to get acquired because they lack the scale for decent returns as standalone businesses, and funding is “drying out.” On top of that, with the rise of ad tech, there is an argument to be made, he points out, for solutions that really are better sitting alongside other services, rather than standalone businesses (which goes back to that ever present question of whether a startup is a platform or a service).
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