Double Verify raises $33 Million for Advertising Monitoring System

Double Verify Ltd., the start-up offering solutions for online advertising monitoring, has recently announced the end of the series B of funding, which has brought the company an amount of $33 million. This second funding round has been led by JMI Equity among with the previous investors from Blumberg Capital, Genacast Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners and one of the venture capital sections of Comcast Communications Corporation. Up to this moment, the company has managed to raise an amount of $46.5 million, which actually gives the firm a value of $200 million.

From this moment on, JMI Equity is going to dictate the direction towards which the company is headed. Moreover, JMI Equity has lots of experience when it comes to the digital advertising world. The company has also been behind the sale of DoubleClick to Google Inc. for an amount of $3.1 billion in 2007, meaning two years after the moment when JMI has acquired the company from its founders for an amount of $1.1 billion.

Gil Wasserman, the SVP engineering from Double Verify has declared in an interview to Globes: “The current financing round was quite quick, because JMI is very familiar with the online advertising world. JMI wants to make a profit, and its track record shows that they know how to do it – how to take a company like ours, invest in it, and bring it to the next level.” To the question regarding the doubt whether we will see a sale of Double Verify in two years from now, Wasserman replied the following: “We want to further develop the DoubleClick model. It might be through a sale or an IPO. We’re in an industry that allows us to keep both options open.”

The company has been founded by Oren Netzer, the actual CEO, and by Alex Liverant, the actual CTO, in 2008. The last three years have brought the firm quite a powerful growth, as, according to IVC, the company registered revenue of $10 million in 2010. This has helped the company register a growth in personnel from 8 to 80 persons working in Israel and other 80 sales and service staff, working in the US.

Wasserman declared that the company intends to use the money gained in this funding round in order to hire 100 more persons in the year to come: “We’re considering acquisitions in order to achieve rapid growth, rather than to do everything in house. We’re seeking companies that will bring us into new complementary fields where we want to develop.”

As the firm also wants to enter the European market, they have recently opened an office in London. The company offers solutions to advertisers in order to check whether their online ads are actually meeting the established targets. Wasserman declares: “In the print media, it is easy to open the newspaper and wee whether the ads were put in and exactly where. But on the Internet, because it is in real time and on huge scales, it is really hard to monitor. Once they were blind and didn’t know exactly what was happening with their ads, when we came along and opened their eyes.”