Adknowledge Scores 200 Million to Pursue Acquisitions

Kansas City-based Adknowledge, the largest privately owned online advertising company in the U.S., raised over 200 million this January in a combination of debt and equity financing to fuel its growth through future acquisitions. JMI Equity, a growth equity firm that invests in leading software, internet and business services companies, led the equity investment, while Bank of America led the debt financing. In the U.S. and international markets, Adknowledge plans to use the funding to further expand its network so advertisers can access inventory from valuable segments of the long tail marketplace online, such as mobile, video, content sites, and display.

The new investment is a testament to Adknowledge’s strong growth, profitability, and market position. Having roughly doubled its revenue over the past 12 months through a series of strategic acquisitions and organic growth, Adknowledge closed 2010 with over 330 employees, and $300 million in revenue.

Adknowledge operates www.bidsystem.com, a leader in long tail advertising (the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities) for advertisers who are looking to syndicate their advertisements into different types of non-search distribution on a cost-per-click and cost-per-action basis. Today, more than 10,000 advertisers use Adknowledge to promote their offers across “hard to reach” segments of online advertising, such as casual gaming, email, social networks, display, mobile, and domain inventory. The company has developed a unique model for efficiently monetizing disaggregated Web traffic across these various channels, where highly engaged consumers spend the majority of their time online.

“It’s easy to advertise with Google, Bing and Facebook, but much tougher to reach the rest of the Internet because it’s so fragmented,” said Scott Lynn, chief executive officer of Adknowledge. “We believe there are currently too many intermediary companies that make it very confusing and inefficient for advertisers to buy and execute their advertising campaigns across the tail. With this new investment, we will continue to further our goal of creating a ‘must buy’ marketplace for online advertisers.”

“Adknowledge has experienced tremendous growth since its founding, and we believe advertisers will continue to utilize the company’s sophisticated technology platform to streamline their marketing efforts,” said JMI Equity General Partner, Brad Woloson, who has joined Adknowledge’s Board of Directors. “We are excited to have the opportunity to work closely with Scott and the Adknowledge team and lend our expertise in online advertising to help them capitalize on their many growth opportunities.”

Read More about Adknowledge at http://www.adknowledge.com