• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 7, 2013

Thomvest Ventures, a venture capital group headed by founder and managing director Peter Thomson, led DataXu's $27 million venture funding round. The new effort, bringing the total to $65 million, reinforces the company's global expansion road map and technology investments to support programmatic media.

DataXu wants to become a global software company, said Mike Baker, CEO of DataXu. "Marketers are turning their focus to data and analytics, which traditionally hasn't been the case in marketing and media," he said.

Baker wants to move DataXu services into the entire media-buying chain, not just programmatic. Search becomes a consideration when thinking about the life cycle of data to support consumers before, during and after the click.

About 225 DataXu employees at 11 offices in eight countries support clients.

Ask how the company secured another funding round and Baker will explain that the company grew direct-to-enterprise platform sales revenue more than 700% year-over-year, which now makes up the majority of its revenue. It also launched a multichannel demand-side platform to support display, tablet, smartphone, video and Facebook Exchange, with 80% of revenue coming from customers running multichannel.

DataXu also founded the OpenRTB consortium, whose standard for programmatic media was adopted by the IAB. It is now used in more than 80 companies.

Prior investors Atlas Venture, Flybridge Capital Partners and Menlo Ventures also participated in the current funding round. Stefan Clulow, managing director of Thomvest, joins DataXu’s board of directors.