Verve Mobile raises $14M for location-based advertising

Round led by Nokia Growth Partners, along with Qualcomm and BlueRun Ventures

Location-centric mobile ad network Nokia Growth Partners has raised a $14 million Series C round of financing, it was announced Wednesday.

The round was led by led by Nokia Growth Partners, with participation from new investor Qualcomm Incorporated, acting through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures, and Series B lead investor BlueRun Ventures. 

Verve Mobile previously raised $7 million in funding from BlueRun Ventures in September 2010, so the company has raised at least $21 million so far. 

The money will be used to further develop and expand Verve's mobile location-based advertising and publishing products and to grow its marketing and sales capabilities.

"Verve's focus is combining big data, location-based services (LBS) and ad technologies to make mobile advertising work better for advertisers and publishers," Tom MacIsaac , Verve Mobile CEO, said in a statement.  "Nokia and Qualcomm are global leaders in mobile technology innovation and have important insights, assets, initiatives and relationships that can help Verve maintain its lead in location powered mobile advertising."

In addition to the funding, Verve also announced that  John Gardner of Nokia Growth Partners is going to be joining Verve's Board, and that Quinn Li of Qualcomm Ventures has become a Board Observer.

Founded in 2005, the Encinitas, California-based Verve Mobile specializes in location-based mobile advertising, serving national brand advertisers who want to engage consumers on their mobile devices with location-aware, data-driven and highly targeted marketing.

The service offers three products:

• Verve Ad Manager: a mobile monetization platform that publishers use for premium mobile ad serving, location-aware precision targeting, inventory management, reach extension through the Verve Local Marketplace, and reporting and analytics.
• Verve Publisher, allows publishers to create mobile web sites and native apps. They also have access to Ad Manager.
• Verve Local Marketplace: drives local ad dollars to national publishers and national ad dollars to local media properties. It gives local publishers larger scale and reach, while allowing national ppublishers to tap into local ad dollars and harness the power of Verve’s huge channel of partner local sales teams.

Over 3,500 publishers use the Verve platform to manage their mobile advertising businesses.

Verve has offices in New York, Washington D.C. and San Diego. 

Mobile advertising fundraising

Verve Mobile could not be reached for comment.

(Image source: https://www.vervemobile.com)