Just a little over a year ago Michael Barrett was shown the door at Fox Interactive/MySpace – he was, said insiders, the guy that unfairly took the fall when the company missed its $1 billion revenue target.
Fast forward a year and things look pretty good for Barrett. His former boss is long gone from Fox Interactive and shuffled to a new job at News Corp. MySpace is on the ropes. Meanwhile Barrett, landing solidly on his feet, is running one of the hottest online advertising startups in New York: AdMeld.
The company already raised $7 million in funding late last year. Today they’ll announce a new $8 million round, bringing the total to $15 million. Existing investors Spark Capital and Foundry Group led the round.
The AdMeld platform optimizes and manages multiple ad networks and exchanges for publishers. Customers, which include Discovery, FOX News, Huffington Post, IAC, Thomson Reuters and WWE, use Admeld to manage those various networks and maximize revenues. AdMeld does things like locate undervalued ad inventory and replace it with higher performing stuff.
Publishers like this kind of thing, and the ROI is easy to prove out. AdMeld also offers publishers centralized reporting and other features.
The company is also opening a London, UK office and data center, they say, to expand European operations.