About the company

Location: 1725 Westlake Avenue North Suite 203 , Seattle, Washington 98109, United States flags/United States.gif
Founded in: 2005
Stage: Revenue generating
Number of employees: 16-30
Completed funding: VC B Round
Funding history:
- Date: 06/2008, Series B: $10.0M
Investors: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ignition Partners. Source: WidgetBucks
Profitable year: 2009
Investor names: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ignition Partners
Short URL: http://vator.tv/c/e4b
Profile creation: January 28, 2009
Last updated: April 30, 2009

Categories

Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Internet Web 2.0, Marketing/Advertising

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mpire, widgetbucks, adxpose, vertical-ad-network, optimization, campaign-verification, widgets, ecommerce, cpc, cpm, display-ads, interactive-agencies, hulett, draper-fisher-jurvetson, ignition-partners, advertising-optimization-technology,

Mpire Corporation (WidgetBucks/AdXpose)

Mpire Corporation (maker of WidgetBucks and AdXpose) is the market-leading advertising optimization technology company based in Seattle, Wash.
Startup/business
flags/United States.gif Washington, United States
http://mpire.com

Mpire Corporation is the market-leading advertising optimization technology company that is evolving traditional online advertising into a more relevant and engaging medium for publishers and advertisers. Backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Ignition Partners, Mpire is based in Seattle, Wash and offers two distinct branded services: WidgetBucks™ and AdXpose™: 

  • WidgetBucks™ is a vertical shopping ad network that serves 1.5 billion monthly ad impressions through the sites and blogs of over 26,000 publishers. Proprietary performance-driven ad technology called YieldSense™ makes over 17,000 optimization decisions per second, resulting in an average eCPM increase of 50-60 percent for publishers.

 

  • AdXpose™ is patent-pending optimization technology that gives brand marketers and agencies campaign verification and optimization anywhere their ads run across the Internet, including exchanges, ad networks and direct publisher placements. 
 

Latest updates

117 Followers see details »
11339
Dean Jutilla (Director of Marketing & Social Media)
Are Your Web Ads Powerful or Pitiful? Forbes Explores AdXpose http://bit.ly/TJLcV on April 29
11339
Dean Jutilla (Director of Marketing & Social Media)
Do you understand ROI measurement for your online brand campaigns? A Coremetrics study says less than half do - which ain't too good. http://bit.ly/vmv1E on April 28
11339
Dean Jutilla (Director of Marketing & Social Media)
Get out and vote! Tomorrow's the last day to vote for the Seattle 2.0 Awards: Mpire has 4 entries -- Best CEO, CTO, blog about startups, VC) Thanks for your support. http://twurl.nl/7dfmc3 on April 27
11339
Dean Jutilla (Director of Marketing & Social Media)
For a quick overview of Mpire's new AdXpose service for brands, here's a demo on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld2X2N34JW4 on April 27
11339
Dean Jutilla (Director of Marketing & Social Media)
Forbes: "Rise Of Ad Robots" - Mpire (WidgetBucks/AdXpose) among those helping brands & pubs with deep digital media analysis http://twurl.nl/xoxg3f on April 27

Business model

 

 

WidgetBucks shares revenue from CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) feeds distributed through the sites and blogs of online publishers.  

 

Management Bio

Matt Hulett is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mpire. He is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully built profitable companies from scratch. After joining Mpire as CEO in early 2006, Matt turned the standalone comparison shopping site into a multi-vertical ad distribution platform that serves over a billion impressions a month. Before Mpire, Matt was President of the corporate travel division of Expedia, Inc., the world's largest online travel company, where he launched the corporate travel business from an idea to a billion dollar worldwide leader in just a couple of years. Prior to Expedia, Matt was a founding partner of the next generation entertainment company, AtomFilms. He served as President of Atom Entertainment, a firm backed by both Sequoia Capital and Macromedia and was purchased by Viacom for $200M. Under Matt's direction, Atom captured over 20 million unique monthly users and became a leading consumer destination. Matt was the founding consumer products leader at RealNetworks, launching many of the company's most successful products including the RealPlayer and its premium subscription software businesses. Matt also ran the market-leading Reflection X product line at AttachmateWRQ, a privately held provider of enterprise software. A Seattle native, Matt is a Puget Sound Business Journal 40-under-40 recipient (Sept. 2008), and he offers his extensive executive business insights through his personal blog, http://startupwhisperer.com.

 

Greg Harrison    Co-Founder & CTO

Greg Harrison is the Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Mpire. Greg co-founded Mpire, in 2005, and oversees the company's network which processes 10-15 terabytes of data each month. Prior to Mpire, Greg was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Ignition Partners, where he researched the impact of Web services platforms on consumer businesses. Prior to Ignition, Greg served as CTO and VP of Engineering of Vidiator, a Hutchison Whampoa Limited company responsible for deploying all of Hutchison's 14 global third-generation wireless carrier infrastructure. Before Vidiator, Greg held a number of senior engineering, product and program management positions at Envision, Loudeye, and Mosaix, and he has also founded and operated his own consulting and software development company. Greg holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Colorado State University.

 
Kirby Winfield    Chief Revenue Officer

Kirby Winfield is the Chief Revenue Officer of Mpire. Kirby joined Mpire in August, 2008 and is responsible for the company’s advertising sales and distribution strategy. Before Mpire, Kirby operated Ascend Solutions, which provided strategic guidance for portfolio companies of Clearstone Venture Partners, Monster Venture Partners, and Wescom Capital. Prior to Ascend Solutions, Kirby was the General Manager and Vice President of the consumer Web site division of Marchex, Inc. (MCHX), overseeing more than 200,000 owned and operated Web sites. During his tenure, Marchex grew to 31 million unique monthly visitors and conducted a successful NASDAQ IPO. Prior to Marchex, Kirby was responsible for corporate, brand, and product marketing at Go2Net (acquired by InfoSpace [INSP]), which became a top 20 online network and conducted a successful NASDAQ IPO during his tenure. Kirby sits on the Board of Directors of SharperAgent, LLC, a leading provider of CRM and marketing services to real estate agents, and invests in and advises a number of online media startups.

 
Jeff Bergstrom    Chief Financial Officer

Jeff Bergstrom is Chief Financial Officer of Mpire. As Mpire’s CFO, Bergstrom is responsible for managing the company's financial strategy and operations, as well as overseeing and implementing all financial reporting, forecasting, tax functions, and cash flow operations. Jeff has been an Internet startup "exit" veteran during his 18-year financial career. He has managed multi-billion-dollar acquisitions and mergers, facilitated private equity transactions, and navigated business finances during tough macro-economic times. In all, Bergstrom has built and sold three tech and Internet companies resulting in over $2.2B in shareholder value. He spent five years with Internet company Go2Net, helping the company grow to over $110M in annual revenue and $40M in annual operating cash flow. He was deeply involved with the purchase and integration of nine companies in two years, and also led the financial team ultimately responsible for the acquisition by InfoSpace for approximately $2.0B. Before Mpire, Bergstrom was CFO of The PowerTech Group, senior director of finance within Areva T&D, a French public multinational industrial conglomerate, and Controller of Risk Management Solutions, which was sold to a private equity fund run by Morgan Stanley. He has also had two tours of duty with Arthur Anderson, LLP.

 

Matt Pangrazio    VP of Sales

Matt Pangrazio is the Vice President of Sales at Mpire. Matt joined the company in January 2009, and is responsible for the company’s advertising sales strategy. Before Mpire, Matt was the Director of vertical markets, a sales division of Marchex, Inc. (MCHX), where he was in charge of bringing in vertically focused advertisers to the Marchex advertising network. During his tenure, Matt brought in over $5 million in quarterly revenue. Prior to Marchex, Matt was a sales manager at Go2Net (acquired by InfoSpace), which became a top 20 online network and conducted a successful NASDAQ IPO during his tenure. Matt holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Washington.

 

Dean Jutilla    Director of Marketing & Social Media

Dean Jutilla is Director of Marketing and Social Media for Mpire. Dean joined Mpire in October 2006 and today oversees all external-facing marketing, public and media relations efforts, including the company's blogs. He is a 17-year marketing communications veteran who has worked at both eBay (2004-2006) and Yahoo! (1999-2002), and also served as principal and owner of his own marketing communications firm.

 

IP and defensibility

Mpire's world-class engineering and development team continues to build patent-pending, proprietary technologies that all deliver on the mission of evolving interactive advertising into a more progressive medium. These advancements benefit publishers and advertisers through their respective returns, but it's online consumers who reap the rewards of being served more relevant, interesting and engaging ad content — thanks to the following types of technologies.

YieldSense™

YieldSense is a performance-advertising technology that works behind the scenes to increase the rate of return, or eCPM, on publishers' WidgetBucks ad widgets. YieldSense does all the heavy lifting of ad testing so publishers can focus on creating content for their blog or Web site.

AdXpose™

AdXpose™ is an online ad optimization technology that gives brand marketers and interactive media agencies greater ROI and unprecedented transparency around their campaigns running anywhere across the Internet. AdXpose automatically tracks creative performance, consumer engagement and ad placement through all ad networks, exchanges and direct publisher placements.

InView

InView tracks and reveals ad position on any given page for a publisher and advertiser. In fact, a 2008 study shows that 30 percent of the $30 billion display ad market are "below the fold" and never seen by viewers.

Engaging Flash-based Ads

Flash-based rich media ad units draw eyeballs because they don't look like ads. Plus, our hybrid ads give publishers two types of revenue — CPC and CPM — from the same ad widget instance. When a page containing a WidgetBucks ad loads, a CPM display ad first appears for 15 seconds and then resolves to a CPC interactive shopping widget.

ClickVault™

ClickVault zeros in on click fraud, one of the toughest and biggest issues facing online advertising today. Our proprietary token-based verification system is one of the most advanced technologies in the prevention and detection of click fraud.

YieldWrapper™

YieldWrapper complements publishers' current display ad revenue by giving them the ability to combine their own ad tags with WidgetBucks ad tags. This allows publishers to honor their premium display ad inventory while also integrating WidgetBucks display ads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for employees

Employee description

Java Developer: Platform Group

A Platform Group Java Developer is one whose primary language is Java. This person possesses a passion for object-orientated design and appreciates Java as a vehicle for delivering a solid language on which to build professional-grade applications.

See full job description here:  http://www.mpire....

 

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