UPDATED 12:50 EDT / MARCH 30 2012

The Millennial Media Timeline: A Mobile Road to Success

On March 28 Millennial Media,  the cross-platform mobile advertising company, announced the pricing of their initial public offering of 10.2 million shares of common stock at a price to the public of $13 per share.  They started trading yesterday, March 29, and shares nearly doubled on their debut.  From the original $13 per share, trading closed at $25 per share and even reached as high as $27.90 during trading.

“We’re not at all surprised by the robust debut from Millennial Media,” said Morningstar IPO Analyst Jim Krapfel.  “The firm is the only pure play way for investors to invest in possibly the best growth market – mobile advertising. We think the firm should be able to grow revenues around 60%-80% in 2012 and achieve operating margins in the mid-single digits. In the near term, we think Millennial could continue to take share from Apple and smaller industry players as the firm can achieve greater advertiser reach with less bias since the firm is agnostic to mobile operating systems. Shares no longer look cheap here but we wouldn’t be surprised to see the market take the stock to even higher levels in the weeks and months to follow.”

Millennial and their stockholders raised $132.6 million for the IPO, and this could be used to expand the company so they can take on larger ad companies.  “They now have the money to hire more sales people, expand internationally,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst at Framingham, Massachusetts-based research firm IDC.

Mobile advertising is such a hot commodity these days that Millennial’s optimistic early performance in the stock market could lure in more investors, partners and clients.  But how did it all start?

Where it all began

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Photo: Portfolio.com

In 2006 Millennial Media was founded by a former Verizon executive targeting Apple and Google as ad competitors.  No one knew about them, they were just a simple startup seeking big business.  But they started getting traction because of their unique platform.

Back when they started, most everyone was focused on internet ads, but Millennial saw things differently.  They saw how enormous the mobile sector would be and how it is an entirely different market from the internet.  This is where they platform developed and flourished.

Millennial’s technology is now the foundation of the platform that powers the mobile capabilities of some of the largest media companies in the world, and it is the same technology that enables tens of thousands of media and application developers to monetize their mobile ad inventory and invest that revenue into new endeavors and technology advancements.

But getting to where they are now wasn’t that simple.

The Millennial Media Timeline

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2006

Millennial Media was born.  Co-founded by Paul Palmieri, President and CEO of Millennial, who previously led the mobile multimedia business for Verizon Wireless for five years.

2007

January: Millennial received $6.3 million in Series A funding from Bessemer Venture Partner, an investor in companies such as Blue Nile, Skype and VeriSign; and Columbia Capital, an investor in Mobi, Nextel and XM Satellite Radio; and Acta Wireless.

*A good sign that a business is thriving is when it gets investors.  People investing in a business simply means that they see something good in that company and they believe that it is a good investment and they will benefit greatly in the future.

March: Millennial launched Millennial Motion, a technology for delivering rich media mobile campaigns that builds brand engagement in new ways on mobile phones, and Decktrade, a performance-based auction service that meets the immediate advertising goals of mobile content providers and direct marketers while creating incremental revenue for publishers.  They were also named by information technology research firm IDC as one of their Top 10 wireless companies to watch in 2007.

May: Millennial a was the recipient of Red Herring 100 Spring, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in North America

October: Decktrade was upgraded to 2.0 and featured a convenient, time saving one-click campaign management tool that eliminates the hassle of having to allocate budgets and set up campaigns for each carrier, and each subsequent destination URL.

November: Millennial raised $15 million in Series B funding  led by Charles River Ventures.  In return, Millennial appointed CRV’s George Zachary to its board of directors and used the funding to aggressively extend their leadership position in the fast-growing mobile advertising industry.

2008

April: Millennial released a new mobile media planning tool which is a web-based solution that combines multiple data sources to provide an actionable, targetable media plan based on audience composition, composition index, available impressions, and potential reach by site, device and carrier for any defined target audience.

July: Bango’s mobile analytics service was integrated into Decktrade that allowed any advertiser to seamlessly add a Bango campaign tracking link to a campaign, thereby enabling accurate tracking of a variety of metrics including unique visitors, country, network and device.

2009

April: Millennial and WaveMarket, a leader in mobile location-based platforms and applications, partnered to deliver location-based advertising.

May: Millennial was one of the finalists in the “Most Innovative Company of the Year” and “Marketing Campaign of the Year – For a Product” categories in The 2009 American Business Awards.

November:  Millennial closed a $16M Series C round of growth funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with the participation of existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, and Charles River Ventures.  The funding added Patrick Kerins, General Partner of NEA to Millennial’s board of directors.

*Not to brag much but during this year, Millennial became one of SiliconANGLE’s sponsors.  :)

2010

February: Millennial acquired TapMetrics, the San Francisco-based mobile analytics firm, focused on application usage and behavior, for an undisclosed amount.

April: Millennial announced an SDK and the PadMedia Creative Suite, which was specifically made for the iPad to help advertisers, app developers and publishers maximize the media capabilities of the said device.

2011

January: Millennial raised an additional $27.5M in growth equity funding, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Charles River Ventures (CRV), with the participation of New Enterprise Associates (NEA).  The new funding was dedicated to the acceleration of the company’s 2011 global growth plan.

March: Millennial became a Premium member of the Mobile Marketing Association and take on the leadership role in developing an industry wide MMA Mobile Marketing Guide which will draw on in-depth research across the industry to capture the state of the global mobile market.

May: Millennial acquired Condaptive, the DC-based mobile startup focused on audience formation and development through the innovative analysis of data.  Terms of the deal were not disclosed.  There were rumors going around that Microsoft was looking to acquire Millennial.

November: Millennial announced mmStudio, a suite of mobile advertising tools intended to enable advertisers and agencies to easily deliver compelling mobile ads on Millennial Media’s global mobile platform.  They also expanded their reach to Asia.

2012

January: Millennial announced the new “App Engagement Program” that allows brands to re-engage users who have previously downloaded their app, and use mobile display ads to drive them back to specific destinations inside the app. Advertisers who use the new solution will also gain unique conversion metrics, and the ability to retarget consumers with relevant messaging.

February: Millennial announced that mMedia, its newest self-service mobile solution, from beta to full release.  mMedia allows mobile app developers, franchises, and small or independent businesses to utilize mobile as a strategic piece of their marketing strategy.

March: Millennial announced the pricing of their initial public offering of 10.2 million shares of common stock at a price to the public of $13 per share.  Began trading in the New York Stock Exchange.


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