Chinese mobile ad company, I-Media bags $20M

Kleiner Perkins joins IDG in Asian mobile marketing investment as I-Media continues to innovate

When you look at the streets of San Francsisco, Los Angeles and other metro areas around the US you see a lot of people glued to their mobile phones, but nowhere is the mobile customer base more dense and strong than in China.

Currently, the largest mobile market in the world, Chinese businesses are rushing to improve their mobile marketing strategy, and one of the biggest businesses to turn to in Beijing is the marketing solution company I-Media. On Wednesday, I-Media announced that it closed a $20 million series B financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers with participation from existing investor IDG. This brings the total amount of VC for the company to $30 million.

Since its launch in 2010, I-Media has been showing substantial growth, I-Media projects that its 2012 revenue will be in the ballpark of $47 million -- that's three times the revenue brought in last year.

I-Media said it plans to use this new capital injection to grow its activities in the Chinese market as well as expanding further into other markets in Asia. 

The company focus for the next year or two will be to provide its customers more products, better ad serving technology and getting a larger base of buyers and sellers for its network.  

“The mobile ad ecosystem is driven by media and application developers and advertisers,” said CEO Shu Yi, in a statement. “I-Media will focus on building a more efficient mobile ad ecosystem, and delivering the best ROI for advertisers and highest yield for publishers and developers.”

I-Media is moving forward with the home court advantage in China over Western companies that would otherwise have been able to expand into Asian territories and has been able to snag several senior tech engineers from companies like Google and Yahoo as it grows.

Other advertising news this week

Also on announced on Wednesday morning was the $15 million funding round secured by online ad retargeting company AdRoll. 

Previously, the San Francisco company raised $8 million from Mercus Capital, Accel, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and others.  

AdRoll strategies for this is using liquid ads (an ad that has the ability to change based on the individual's likes and interest) that cater to a particular 

AdRoll has seen significant growth in the online advertising industry and in its own business lately. Last year, AdRoll experienced a 400%+ increase in overall revenue; 400% increase in impressions served; and a 334% increase in customer base. And with the display advertising industry on its was to $200 billion business, AdRoll is poised for further expansion. 

Last year AdRoll's revenue was roughly $13 million, a significant growth from 2009 when they brought in less than $1, and in just a three months their staff has swelled from 60 people to 85 -- with plans to get a larger San Francisco office and add more offices outside of outside the Bay Area soon.

Customers of AdRoll include BMW, Toms Shoes, Saks Fifth Avenue, Microsoft, One King's Lane and Tivo.  

Just yesterday, I reported the numbers out of Nielsen showing that, while online advertising may not result in the biggest returns for the amount paid, this segment of advertising saw 12.1% more spending in Q1 than the same time one year ago.

Earlier this year, Nielsen projected that Internet advertising would be worth $98.2 billion worldwide, representing 16% of all advertising spend, especially now that advertising is more personalized, targeted and precise to personal traffic, needs and interests.