ADiFY Gets $19 Million In Round B

I caught a press release from ADiFY announcing that they received $19 million in series B funding. ADiFY is a leading provider of technology servicing vertical ad networks.

There seems to be no end in sight in the race to secure advertising models and platforms directed at Web 2.0. According to ADiFY, funding resources over the last year have been varied with Venture Partners, GE Commercial, NBC Universal and Time Warner leading the pack at boosting ADiFY towards their “Build Your Own Network”.

Since last November ADiFY has built the technology and know how to create dozens of custom advertising networks. The goal of these new ad services is to target niches that are either undeveloped or otherwise marginalized by the current Web ad framework. I expect a secondary goal would be to attract at least part of the market already occupied by Google and other large Internet concerns.

The need for Brand advertisers to reach segments in this way is pretty obvious and judging from what I witnessed at Mochila the technology and money are there to do that and more. These vertical networks can effectively collaborate or compete with other ad services because of the “zone of opportunity” created by the niche market. Larger entities have everything to gain and nothing to lose in cooperating in ventures like ADiFY.

I tend to see this movement as a way for traditional ad revenue companies to make entry onto the Web in competition with Google and others. If I were Microsoft I would seriously look at these effective and diverse tools for both sellers and buyers of content and products in my customer base. Wow, I sounded all Wall Street on this one!