UK mobile ad firm LoopMe has raised half a million pounds to fund its in-app advertsing inbox.
Ballpark Ventures led a consortium of Super Angels and VCs investing $500,000 in the firm.
The money raised will fund LoopMe’s international sales and business development and continue product innovation for its mobile ad inbox solution.
The LoopMe concept was launched earlier this year to address familiar problems for app developers, who need to raise revenue from advertising but find that most ad formats are intrusive, not optimised for phones or tablets, or take users away from their apps.
The LoopMe button lets users users can click on the icon to open up an ‘inbox’ comprising a range of apps and offers that have been socially rated and endorsed by the wider community. They can interact with several advertisers in one session, but are not migrated away from the app itself.
Users can hit ‘back’ to return to the game or app at any time.
This new funding illustrates investor confidence in the idea. Ballpark Partners was represented in the deal by Russell Buckley, best known as the first employee and MD International of AdMob – which was sold to Google for $750m.
Russell is joined by John Taysom (founder of Reuters Venture Capital which had 16 IPO exits including Yahoo and many successful trade exits), Torben Maajaard (founder of Ciklum and AdQuota) and Peter Barry (founder of Vodafone Ventures in Silicon Valley, investor in mobile ad company Amobee, sold to SingTel for $321m).
LoopMe was founded by mobile ad industry veterans Stephen Upstone (CEO) and Marco Van De Bergh (CTO), who worked together at Ad Infuse and Velti (NASDAQ IPO 2012).
LoopMe was founded in London a growing global hub for technology disruption.
Upstone said: “Investors immediately saw the value of LoopMe, and we had a number of different partners interested. We chose quality of industry experience at the highest level globally and we are thrilled to have secure such high quality investors with experience of building the world’s largest mobile and online ad businesses.”
Russell Buckley added: “Ballpark sees exponential growth ahead in mobile advertising and LoopMe has come up with something genuinely unique and valuable.
“Its LoopMe concept gives publishers great results without changing existing relationships while advertisers get better engagement and results.”
www.Loopmemedia.com
