Online German media business raises €53m

Adconion Media Group, a Munich-based internet advertising network has raised the largest venture investment for a European online media company in history, closing its Series C round on €53.4m.

The latest round was led by new investor Index Ventures, its first investment from its recently closed €400m growth fund. It was joined by returning investor and German VC Wellington Partners.

Founded in 2004 as EuroClick, Adconion delivers online ads using its own technology. The technology is used by its customers which combines campaign specific data with real time behavioral user data. It was produced by the Adconion development division located in Santa Monica, US.

Its clients consist of advertising agencies and direct advertisers as well as a partner base of premium websites from a wide range of sectors. It has offices across the globe, in London, Munich, Hamburg, Paris, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, Toronto and Santa Monica. Following the acquisition of aQuantive by Microsoft, DoubleClick by Google and 24/7 by WPP, Adconion is now one of the largest independent advertising networks in the world.

The company raised its first clutch of venture capital in 2007 from Wellington. Frank Boehnke, general partner at the firm, says of the decision to support Adconion: “With this technology, Adconion offers customers online forms of advertising that generate a high success rate and thus an optimum return on investment. We are confident that this represents a promising model with a strong growth potential in a market that’s already expanding vigorously.”

What attracted Wellington was the success the company had already achieved in a shirt time. By the time of the Series A round, it was already racking up 30 million ad impressions a day in Germany, and 220 million worldwide, and already had significant activity in the UK and the US.

Index was attracted by Adconion’s potential. Partner Dominique Vidal said: “Adconion has the relationships, the expertise and the best in class technology becoming of a future market-leader in technology’s hottest growth sector. Our experience as investors in the advertising space enables us to support Adconion in continuing its rapid expansion throughout Europe and North America and to further build its global presence. As online media becomes more fragmented and as agencies look for more independent partners for solutions, we believe ad networks like Adconion are perfectly positioned to capture more advertising spend.”