Vantage Media Secures $70 Million Financing Round; Names New CEO
2/28/07 – Venice-based Vantage Media, the performance-based search engine marketing and online lead generation firm, today announced it has completed a $70 million series A preferred financing round led by Montgomery & Co. and Scale Venture Partners. The company also announced that it has named Steve Jillings as CEO.
Tudor Ventures and Integral Capital Partners also participated in the funding round, according to Vantage. Jamie Montgomery, CEO of Montgomery & Co., and Rory O'Driscoll, managing director of Scale Venture Partners, will also join the board.
Jillings comes to Vantage after service as CEO of Frontbridge Technologies, which was acquired by Microsoft in August 2005.
“The addition of Steve and key members of his Frontbridge management team, along with our new investors, will allow Vantage Media to continue its rapid growth while maintaining its market leadership,” said Mark DiPaola, founder and president of Vantage Media. “We are thrilled to partner with such an experienced team and believe that our clients will see immediate benefits as the company enters a new level of growth.”
“Mark and I have built a great relationship over the past year, and I look forward to working with him and his team to leverage the company's skills and proven technology platform,” said Jillings. “This validates Vantage Media's successful search engine marketing solutions for the education marketplace, and speaks volumes for the company's growth potential across new markets.”
Founded in 2002, Vantage Media says that it was one of the first companies to offer search marketing solutions on a performance basis, and that as an early customer of both Google and Yahoo, Vantage has gained unique insight into the inner-workings of these search engines and how to harness them to benefit its clients. Vantage says it currently manages more than 40 million keywords yielding over one billion impressions per year, and is one of the largest providers of search-based marketing leads for educational institutions.
“Paid search is the biggest recipient of the rapid shift of traditional ad spending to the online market,” said Jamie Montgomery, Montgomery & Co. CEO. “However, the complexities and costs involved with running a paid search campaign are substantial. We believe Vantage Media’s performance-based model will ultimately allow almost any business to benefit from paid search cost- effectively.”
Vantage Media – www.vantagemedia.com
