TubeMogul has raised ¥100 million ($1.24 million) in financing and has opened up an office in Tokyo, Japan. Newly appointed CEO Masahiro Kano will lead TubeMogul Japan, the new independent entity. The venture funding came from Digital Advertising Consortium, a trading desk and division of holding company Hakuhodo, and Omnibus, an independent startup ad tech company and new strategic partner of TubeMogul Japan. “Japan is just experiencing the shift in the way media is bought and sold,” said Keith Eadie, VP of marketing, TubeMogul. “While they are coming to it maybe a few years later, there’s obviously a massive economic opportunity…to capitalize on.” Eadie notes that Japan is an “extremely well-educated, early-adopting society in terms of devices and media consumption.” This news comes just weeks after OpenX CRO Jason Fairchild described Japan as “hungry” for RTB, an observation Eadie agreed with. The biggest hurdle for TubeMogul is the seeming lack of real-time inventory across all channels in Japan. According to Eadie, TubeMogul is “hopefully less than six weeks away” from partnering with a couple of premium publishers, but he couldn’t specify who those publishers were. In any case, TubeMogul’s plan to develop the real-time inventory in Japan is centered on partnering publishers that are willing to make their inventory real-time biddable. Programmatic video buying is still young in Japan. However, it’s growing rapidly. According to comScore, 83.7% of Japan’s population watches video. TubeMogul's numbers show an average 11.2 million in-stream impressions per day (compared to 1 billion in the U.S.), but that number is growing at a rate of 34.3% per month. Some quick math shows that if programmatic video buying continues to grow at the same pace per month, Japan would reach 1 billion in-stream impressions a day about 15 months from now. The company also launched a translated version of their site: Eadie says TubeMogul will work with Google’s DoubleClick, which already has a presence in Japan. The ¥100 million is completed dedicated to TubeMogul Japan and will also be used by Kano to build a team.
Legolas Media has named online industry sales vet Michael Hegarty vice president-media sales for its Intelligent Media Buying service. He joins from audience-targeting platform Netmining, where he was director of East Coast and Midwest sales.
Amid an ongoing social-marketing boom, software start-up Spredfast just raised $18 million, led by OpenView Venture Partners. Having previously raised $15 million, the social marketing specialist plans to invest further in its technology platform and staff. Over the next few years, most forecasters see social media ad spending rising. ZenithOptimedia, for one, recently predicted that spending on social media would increase by 35% in 2013 and 2014, and by 32% in 2015. As evidenced by Spredfast’s own research, social has become a key component of the marketing mix. In fact, according to its own Social Engagement Index, the average large company now manages social activity across 21 groups and nearly 100 social accounts. In 2012, Spredfast reported 400% revenue growth, and a doubling in headcount to about 110 employees, the majority of whom are sales staff and engineers. What is driving all the interest in social marketing? Chiefly, companies are realizing that social can no long be treated as a side issue, according to Rod Favaron, CEO of Spredfast. “The time is fast approaching when your customers will no longer email or call you,” Favaron said. “They will send out a signal via social and expect a thoughtful response.” Recent customer acquisitions include AT&T, Caterpillar, Rackspace and Starbucks, while Spredfast reports expanding relationships with AAA, T. Rowe Price, Whole Foods Market and Warner Brothers. Following nearly a decade of naive experimentation, investors believe that social marketing is finally maturing. “Companies are no longer concerned with Likes, but rather with building real customer engagement and value across their social networks," said Adam Marcus, managing director at OpenView Venture Partners. Existing investors, including Austin Ventures and InterWest Partners, also participated in this latest funding round.