Vurve automates many time‑intensive aspects of online marketing, positioning itself as “Advertising on autopilot” via an engine called Sophie. After a signup workflow that typically takes under five minutes, customers set a monthly budget (minimum $200, maximum $10,000) and Sophie runs ads across search and display channels including Facebook, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and shopping sites such as Amazon. The service also automatically posts products to shopping search engines like Bing and Google Product Search and reallocates spend over time based on performance. Vurve has integrated with ecommerce platforms — Shopify is integrated into its dashboard and Yahoo storefronts are supported; Magento support was due to launch in two weeks and the company said it is in talks with most popular hosted ecommerce platforms. The company charges a 15% fee on customers' budgets. Vurve entered beta in February 2010, launched publicly in November, previously raised a $1.2M seed round in 2009, and has just closed a $4.5M Series A. Vurve provides an automated advertising platform for small merchants, auto-creating and placing ads across self-serve channels and making changes based on performance. The company came out of a small private beta and charges customers who spend between $200 and $10,000 per month on ads. Vurve currently integrates with Shopify and Yahoo Shopping and has preferred API access with Google and Facebook. The company raised a $1.2 million venture round last year and is led by Amit Kumar, formerly Director of Product at Yahoo and VP Product at Dapper. Vurve cites a $7 billion addressable market for small-business online advertising. Over time the company plans to expand to additional platforms and possibly offer direct connections for non-platform shops.

Total raised

$6M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Mar 2011