Eyeblaster Takes Second Shot At IPO

Eyeblaster on Wednesday filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $115 million in an initial public offering of common stock. The online ad campaign management firm did not reveal how many shares it plans to sell, their expected price, or where they will be listed.

"A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective," Eyeblaster said in a statement on Wednesday.

New York-based Eyeblaster actually filed for an IPO back in March 2008, but had to cancel its plans due to rough market conditions. Hardly an anomaly, at least 26 tech companies canceled their IPOs that year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Institutions and investors underwriting this latest IPO include J.P. Morgan Securities, Deutsche Bank Securities, Pacific Crest Securities LLC, FBR Capital Markets & Co, ThinkEquity, and Broadpoint Capital, according to a preliminary prospectus filed with the SEC.

As a company rooted in the world of rich media, Eyeblaster has more recently secured its position as an independent ad-serving platform through deals with heavyweights like GroupM's MediaCom last summer. Last month, Eyeblaster partnered with Strata, which is owned by Comcast Corp., on the launch of an "agency-based" ad-serving solution. The new product, developed with Eyeblaster's MediaMind product, offers integrated access to Eyeblaster to simplify campaign management, and reduce the need to reenter campaign buys into multiple systems.

Meanwhile, late last year, Eyeblaster partnered with Dentsu America on its recently launched ad-serving service for agencies and advertisers. Dentsu is easily the largest ad agency in Japan -- the world's second-largest ad market after the U.S.

The MediaMind by Eyeblaster service was designed to look beyond clicks and demonstrate actual online advertising effectiveness through engagement metrics, Scott Daly, EVP and executive media director at Dentsu America, told Online Media Daily in December.

The partners pointed to recent research from eMarketer, which showed that in North America, expandable banners had only a 0.3% click-through rate, but show a 7.1% "dwell rate" -- or the percentage of users exposed to an ad who interact with it with their cursors -- and an average user "dwell time" of more than 45 seconds.

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