Vungle builds 15-second in-app mobile video ads and has primarily served trailers for other apps. The company says 100 million people see Vungle ads every month. Vungle is in the final stages of building what it calls the first-ever in-app mobile video ad exchange to attract brand advertisers and enable repurposing of TV ad content for mobile. CEO Zain Jaffer said the additional funding will allow the company to be more aggressive, including plans to triple headcount from around 50 employees by the end of the year and expand internationally, particularly in Asia. Vungle aims to become a full monetization platform for publishers and plans to launch more monetization products later in the year. The company has positioned its technology as plumbing to move the industry away from intrusive banner ads. Vungle operates a native mobile video advertising platform that serves 15-second high-definition video ads and provides an in-house creative team to produce ad creative. The company has shifted from a CPI pricing model toward ads that users complete. Vungle has amassed roughly 2 billion cumulative video views and operates with 35 employees in offices across San Francisco, London and Berlin. Its client base includes gaming studios such as Zeptolab, and it competes with firms like Flurry and Tapjoy. The team recently hired Wayne Chan, formerly a Kabam co-founder, as VP of engineering, and the company graduated from AngelPad the prior year. Vungle plans to use the new funding to expand its team and technology platform. Vungle builds a service that produces 15-second HD "trailers" of mobile apps using screen-capture technology and professional voiceovers, delivering finished videos within 24 hours. It also operates an in-app video platform that functions like an ad network, letting developers display trailers for other apps and monetize by showing trailers even without ad spend. The product is in alpha and is being tested with a handful of developers, with a wider beta rollout expected in June. Pricing has not been determined and the founders say they are not planning to offer trailer creation as a standalone service for now. Vungle was founded by Zain Jaffer and Jack Smith, who used aggressive targeted ads to gain entry into the AngelPad incubator. The company has secured outside capital, having closed a seed round to support product rollout and testing.

Total raised

$26M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Feb 2014