Monday, November 1, 2010
Rubicon Project Raises $18M, Buys Fox Audience Network
Santa Monica-based Rubicon Project said this morning that it has raised $18M in additional funding, and acquired the Fox Audience Network (FAN) from New Corporation. Rubicon said that the new funding round came from News Corporation, Clearstone Venture Partners, IDG Ventures Asia, Mayfield Fund, NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund and Jarl Mohn. The new funding brings Rubicon's total funding to $60M. In announcing the deal, CEO Frank Addante said the firm has achieved profitability "significantly ahead of plan." In further details on the FAN deal, Addante also said that it has not acquired the advertising sales team at FAN, saying that it "is not, and will not be, an ad network." Intead, the firm is using FAN's acquisition to add around 100 employees from FAN as part of its engineering and product team. Rubicon Project operates a service which helps web publishers optimize the advertising on the site, by selecting the best ad networks to run on a particular publisher page. As part of the announcement, Rubicon said it will have over $100M in revenues in 2010. More information »