Auditude is a company that helps large websites manage online video ads. Auditude has raised $11 million in a second round of funding led by Granite Ventures with participation from Silicon Valley Bank, Redpoint Ventures, and Greylock Partners. They plan on using the new funding for expansion and looking into mobile video. Auditude also hired Jeremy Helfand, the former CEO of United Online’s media group. According to paidContent, Auditude manages “billions” of monthly video impressions. Some of their clients include Comcast, DailyMotion, Fox News, MLB, and Sony. Auditude raised $10 million two years ago from Redpoint Ventures and Greylock Partners.

San Francisco based online advertising company Martini Media has raised $6 million in funding.  Martini Media ads are targeted towards wealthy people.  Ads sold through Martini Media include yachts, private jets, golf events, etc.  Invite only publishers are asked to be part of Martini Media.  The investors behind this round of funding include publisher Reed Elsevier Ventures, Granite Ventures, and Venrock.  Kevin Brown of Reed and Chris McKay of Granite joined the board of directors as part of the funding deal.  They join Brian Ascher of Venrock, who is already on the board.  Martini Media is led by CEO Skip Brand, a former Yahoo! and Pudding Media exec. [BizJournals]

Ozmo Devices has raised $10.8 million in venture capital from Atlantic Bridge Ventures, Granite Ventures, and Intel Capital. Brian Long of Atlantic Bridge will be joining the board of directors at Ozmo Devices as a result of the funding.

Smule, the company that has developed the I Am T-Pain application has raised $8 million in a third round of funding. The I Am T-Pain application has been downloaded over 700,000 times and there are in-app purchases that allow you to do karaoke to some of T-Pain’s hit songs like Bartender and Got Money. Smule has another application called Ocarina that has been downloaded over 1.65 million times. Smule expects to make about $3 million in revenues this year. Smule’s most recent funding round was provided by Shasta Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Granite Ventures. Smule has raised a total of $13.7 million.

“Our system is about driving user behavior with rewards, competition and status, creating an engaging experience on your site, and making sure users are personally invested in your site,” stated Rajat Paharia, founder/CEO of Bunchball. “You make money when users do things on your site. Nitro helps them do more things, and make you more money.”

Bunchball is a company that designs custom games for media companies and even has a Facebook Application that focuses on games. Bunchball is based in Redwood City, Calif. and has raised $4 million in funding from Granite Ventures and Adobe Ventures. Both of these venture companies also invested $2 million in 2006, bring Bunchball funding to $6 million in total.

Bunchball’s Facebook Application has games such as 8 Ball Pool, 9 Ball Pool, Alien Exterminator, Arcade Trivia, Football, Checkers, Chess, Pool, and Flower Power. Below is a screen shot (click to enlarge) of the user interface for Bunchball’s Facebook Application:

Bunchball also created a custom game for NBC’s The Office. Users can sign up to act as a fictional character working for Dunder-Mifflin. Dunder-Mifflin is the paper manufacturing company where the characters in The Office work. Below is a screen shot (click to enlarge):

Looking at the current trend, social gaming is becoming a hot commodity on the Internet.  I’m excited about the release of Grand Theft Auto IV and seeing how we’ll be able to play over the network.  It’d be great to see some sort of social network connected to it’s release.

Information Source:
[1] Tech Confidental: NBC uses site engagement specialist Bunchball to keep Web users glued by Olaf de Senerpont Domis
[2] paidContent: Bunchball Gets $4 Million in Second Round Funding by Rafat Ali

Redwood City, CA based company, Bunchball is a a hub for Adobe Flash games similar to Atom Entertainment’s Shockwave.com. The two providers of the $2 million investment of Bunchball funding was Adobe Systems Inc. and San Francisco based, Granite Ventures.

Ballbunch provides multi-player Flash games for social networks, blogs, and other websites. And what attracted the investment was that these games are multi-player, a feature that could promote a deeper interaction between game lovers on these social networks such as MySpace.

Almost all of the games that I have seen on Ballbunch remind me of the “retro” games from the 80′s that I used to enjoy and could see myself enjoying once again with the Ballbunch game twists. N-blox Evil Edition is a 2 player Tetris style game where when you clear 2 or more lines from your game, it adds lines of blocks for your opponent to get rid of. Remember the boardgame, Battleship? You can now play the Ballbunch version of Battleship, Sea Battle online against an opponent.

Adobe and Granite Ventures have limited partnership under a company called Adobe Ventures. Chris Hollenbeck and John Leckrone are the partners working on the Ballbunch investment. The founders of Bunchball are Rajat Paharia and Sunil Singh.

[Article Source: VentureBeat]