Turn Inc. announced recently that they have raised $15 million in funding.  The funding was led by Focus Ventures.  Other investors that participated includes Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, and Shasta Ventures.  This round of funding brings Turn’s total funding to $37 million thus far.

Turn helps publishers increase the number of advertisers compete for ad inventory.  Turn helps advertisers increase brand awareness using contextual and behavioral advertisement targetting.

This is Turn’s third round of funding.  Turn plans on using the funding to further product development and to hire additional talent for sales and client services.  Turn Inc. is based in Redwood City, Calif.

Related Links:
1. DigitalMediaWire
2. Turn.com

“Turn has achieved the critical mass that our unique technology needs in order to ensure market leading performance. We’re now ready to scale our market with an even broader group of advertisers and publishers.”
-Jim Barnett, CEO of Turn

Redwood City, Calif.-based ad network company, Turn Inc. recently raised $15 million in second round funding. The investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, and Shasta Ventures. About 3 years ago, Turn raised $8.5 million. This news complements the launch of Turn.com’s Smart Market feature, an automated online advertising service for publishers and advertisers.

“Today’s announcement of the Turn Smart Market demonstrates that the underlying technologies driving Turn—automatic targeting, machine learning, and goal-driven auction pricing—are rock solid,” stated Jim Barnett, the CEO of Turn. “Turn has achieved the critical mass that our unique technology needs in order to ensure market leading performance. We’re now ready to scale our market with an even broader group of advertisers and publishers.”

Barnett is a former CEO of search engine, AltaVista.  Advertiser clients of Turn include CapitalOne, Classmates, Comcast, DeVry, eHarmony, FTD, Geico, Motorola, Netflix, Quicken, Staples, and T-Mobile. Turn was founded in 2005 by Jim Barnett and John Ellis.

[Information Source: Turn Inc. press release via Yahoo!]

Norwest Venture Partners has invested $18 million in Turn.com, a company that is taking on Google as a search advertiser. “Turn is the world’s first automatic targeting, bidded CPA ad network. Which means advertisers can enjoy benefits that no other advertising network can deliver: bidded CPA pricing to eliminate risk, blended targeting to increase relevance, and automatic targeting to simplify campaign management. The result: better performance and higher return on investment [source].”

Rather than using keyword analysis, Turn.com uses demographic and action factors to determine which ads to set in certain places. “We built the world’s first automatic targeting ad network in response to advertiser and publisher demand for a simplified, lower risk solution for online advertising that also improves relevance and revenue,” stated Jim Barnett, the CEO of Turn.com. “The result is a revolutionary improvement in online advertising.”

Turn.com was founded by a former CEO and Executive Vice President of Product and Technology of AltaVista, Jim Barnett and John Ellis.