Millennial Media this morning announced $27.5 million in new funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Charles River Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. This brings total funding of Millennial to over $65 million.
The company said that it would use the money for growth (especially international), technology investment and targeted acquisitions. Millennial also said that the company grew revenues 3X in 2010 over 2009. That partly reflects Millennial’s particular success as well as the mobile ad industry’s general revenue growth.
Mobile advertising and marketing growth will accelerate in 2011. Currently the overall number is just under $1 billion in the US.
IDC’s revised its US mobile ad numbers in December. They depict Millennial as the number three mobile display network, after Google (#1) and Apple (#2). Currently Millennial operates in 250 countries globally and says it reaches 85% of the mobile Internet audience in the US (now almost 90 million according to Nielsen).
Millennial is a future candidate for an IPO but also could be an attractive takeover target as well. However the new funding makes the company more expensive to would-be acquirors.