Millennial Media lands $6.3 million in funding
Mobile-advertising services start-up headed by former Verizon executive attracts three major investors.
Millennial Media, a mobile-advertising services company started by a former a Verizon executive, has received $6.3 million in Series A funding, the company told CNET News.com on Tuesday. The Baltimore-based start-up offers ad delivery, tracking, reporting and optimization across multiple platforms, devices and carriers, in addition to campaign, sales and inventory management services. The funding comes from Bessemer Venture Partner, an investor in companies such as Blue Nile, Skype and VeriSign; Columbia Capital, an investor in Mobi, Nextel and XM Satellite Radio; and Acta Wireless.
As of Tuesday the company supports platforms such as short message Service, wireless application protocol, Qualcomm's binary runtime environment for wireless, Java 2 Micro Edition, and multimedia message service, with plans to support Flash Lite, uiOne and all video codecs (video compression/decompression software) by the end of the second quarter. Millennial's CEO, Paul Palmieri, was formerly the executive director of business development and programming for Verizon and an Advertising.com executive, as well as a venture partner at Acta Wireless from 2005 to 2006. Millennial's goal, according to Palmieri, is to become a one-stop shop for advertisers, publishers and mobile operators.