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Venture Capital: What's New--The Latest On Technology Deals From Dow Jones VentureWire
October 22, 2007
Inspector Gadget
Internet advertising networks have proved to be big-money propositions, especially in the wake of Yahoo Inc.'s recent deal to acquire online-advertising company BlueLithium Inc. and Google Inc.'s agreement to buy DoubleClick Inc. One start-up, NebuAd Inc., claims it has an innovative approach to online-ad targeting.
The company, based in Redwood City, Calif., is developing an ad network that draws data from a device placed with an Internet-service provider. The device uses a technology called deep packet inspection that allows NebuAd to analyze people's online activity -- such as which categories of Web sites users visit through search engines or on their own, what they type into search engines and how long they spend on certain sites. NebuAd says it uses this data to build profiles for Web surfers' IP addresses -- the series of numbers that identify a computer, but not the user, connected to the Internet. It plans to sell the profiles to ad agencies and Web-site publishers, which, it says, won't be able to link the data back to an individual. Internet-service providers must disclose to users that their activities are being tracked.
Last month, Sierra Ventures led a $20.5 million Series B financing round for NebuAd to continue building the product and expand its sales team. NebuAd plans a full launch of the product in November.
--Compiled by Scott Austin, editor of VentureWire, a newsletter published by Dow Jones & Co. (online at VentureWire.com), based on contributions from VentureWire reporters Scott Denne and Ty McMahan. Mr. Austin can be reached at scott.austin@dowjones.com.
