SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - March 4, 2011) - Vurve, the start-up launched last fall to put "advertising on autopilot" for small businesses, today announced that it has secured $4.5 million in Series A financing led by Spark Capital, with participation from Dave McClure and True Ventures. Based in Mountain View, Vurve provides the most affordable, simple and effective way for small businesses to manage online advertising across multiple channels including search, display, social media, shopping engines and others.
Vurve also announced that it has expanded its board of advisors to now include Matt Ackley, head of product, Search and Analytics, Google; Jan Pedersen, chief scientist, Microsoft Bing; and Umang Gupta, CEO, Keynote Systems.
"Without question, online advertising is the best and most targeted way to reach potential buyers. The problem is that effectively managing an online advertising campaign is complex, time consuming and often expensive -- especially for small businesses that need to stay focused on the running their core business," said Santo Politi, general partner at Spark Capital. "Setting up on an online storefront is one thing, but promoting that store to be successful is entirely different challenge that no vendor has been able to address -- until now.
"Vurve has built a first-of-its-kind 'marketing-as-a-service' platform that is leveling the playing field for small businesses to advertise as broadly and effectively as the largest of businesses, but with affordability and simplicity that harkens back to the very early days of self-service AdWords. It is going to be huge."
At a low cost (starting at $200 per month), Vurve empowers small businesses to use the same level of technology for online advertising as the worlds' largest companies deploy. With Vurve, a small business can effectively run its online advertising campaign by simply inputting the desired budget. In turn, Vurve automatically determines the right media channels and provides an estimated number of visitors, page views -- and in most cases -- the predicted sales that a given budget will achieve.
"With this new round of financing, we're now focused on scaling our business to take advantage of the pent-up demand from small businesses to effectively leverage online advertising," said Amit Kumar, founder and CEO of Vurve. "We're looking to build out a team of talented professionals who are passionate about the online ad market and are ready to completely change the way the game is played for small businesses."
About Vurve
Vurve puts "advertising on autopilot" for small businesses, providing the most affordable, simple and effective way to manage online advertising across multiple channels. For more information, visit http://vurve.com.
About Spark Capital
Spark Capital is a venture capital firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, with investments focused on the conflux of the media, entertainment and technology industries. Over the last decade, the Spark team has been instrumental in the development of new markets and market leaders such as Twitter, Tumblr, Svpply, Boxee, KickApps, gdgt, Signpost, 5min and ExtensionFM. With deep experience and $980 million under management, Spark Capital provides world-class entrepreneurs and revolutionary companies with the resources to succeed in today's marketplace. For more information, visit www.sparkcapital.com.
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Meg O'Leary
InkHouse Media + Marketing
meg@inkhouse.net