• by Gavin O'Malley , March 4, 2011

Vurve -- a startup that promises small businesses "advertising on autopilot" -- just raised $4.5 million in a Series A round led by Spark Capital, along with Dave McClure's 500 Startups and True Ventures. "While many online platforms offer self-service tools that businesses can use to manage their own campaigns, the legwork involved with running these ... can be daunting," explains TechCrunch. Vurve "automates many of the most time-intensive aspects of running marketing online." To streamline its offering even further, the startup has been working with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, which has integrated Vurve directly into its administrator dashboard. Not interested in marketers with massive campaigns, Vurve asks its users to set their monthly budgets between $200 and $10,000. Vurve then automatically runs ads through a variety of marketing channels, including search ads on Facebook and Google, and display ads on various shopping sites.