DataXu is a start-up based in Boston, MA that was founded by MIT alumni and other technology entrepreneurs. The goal of the company is to help advertisers optimize campaigns across multiple platforms such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! The service is intended to help advertisers more than publishers who are looking for increased returns on investment. DataXu makes ad purchasing recommendations based on qualitative data in real-time.
“On the marketplaces, sellers get guarantees about the impressions that will be sold for the highest bid price above the specified reserve, and buyers can use the exchange to supplement their online campaigns with low-cost impressions,” stated Robin Wauters, an editor at TechCrunch. “The DataXu platform values, bid manages and buys ads on an impression-by-impression basis, across the major ad exchanges and based on smart algorithms.”
DataXu has the capabilities to make recommendations within milliseconds using the proprietary algorithms that the engineers have come up with at the company. Thus far, DataXu has been testing their algorithm on Yahoo!’s ad inventory system and now they plan to add the Google Ad Exchange platform.
DataXu has about $7.8 million in funding from Atlas Ventures and Flybridge Capital. The company is led by President and CEO Mike Baker.
CloudSwitch is a cloud computing company based in Burlington, MA. CloudSwitch recently announced that they have raised $8 million in their second round of funding and have hired John McEleney as President and CEO.
The $8 million in funding was led by Commonwealth Capital Ventures and includes Matrix Partners and Atlas Ventures. Thus far, CloudSwitch has raised $15 million in funding. Before joining CloudSwitch, McEleney was the chief executive at SolidWorks Corporation.
Dailymotion.com is a user-generated content video website that competes directly with YouTube. Dailymotion is a top 100 global website on Alexa. The company was started in France and raised $34 million in funding two years ago from Advent Venture Partners LLP and AGF Private Equity of Paris. This is on top of the $9.5 million in funding that was provided by Atlas Ventures and Partech International.
The company has also hired Ian Brotherston, a former AOL executive as their CEO. Ian will be taking the place of Mark Zaleski, who is expected to take a non-executive chairman position.
DailyMotion’s revenue is around $16.2 million, but it is not enough to cover bandwidth costs. YouTube on the other hand consumes close to $2 million per day in bandwidth costs and makes about $513-$663 million per year.
