Online adver­tis­ing agen­cies seek­ing to har­ness the poten­tial of new pas­tures might do well to take a look at social media adver­tis­ing start­up Moon­toast, which has just secured Series B fund­ing worth $5 million.

The firm’s client list may not be espe­cial­ly long at 50, but some­times size doesn’t mat­ter. Espe­cial­ly if the list includes names like Nike, Uni­ver­sal, Hyundai, Nexus, Time, Simon & Schus­ter and Lady Ante­bel­lum. Many an art direc­tor, account man­ag­er and copy­writer would fall off their chairs in their haste to grab a client list like that.

No rehashed tra­di­tion­al ads from Moontoast

Moontoast’s Social Acti­va­tion Plat­form was devel­oped to help ad agen­cies and brands gain impres­sive ROIs by dis­trib­ut­ing trans­ac­tion­al, inter­ac­tive rich media ads. It also yields busi­ness met­rics about the impact and reach of the ads.

Moon­toast divides its ads into a series of cat­e­gories; sweep­stakes, sur­veys and a “social store”. It also fea­tures a unit that tempt­ing­ly offers free MP3s when ad view­ers give their email details.

The com­pa­ny makes a point of ensur­ing that its rich media social offer­ings aren’t just tra­di­tion­al ads rehashed for Twit­ter and Face­book. Mar­cus Whit­ney, Moontoast’s CTO and co-founder, said, “In the social adver­tis­ing world, the actu­al cre­ative is con­ver­sa­tion­al. It’s much more mar­ket­ing than stan­dard, old world adver­tis­ing. Our units are meant to real­ly bring the con­ver­sa­tion to life.”

Toward prof­itabil­i­ty

The lat­est cash injec­tion comes cour­tesy of The Mar­tin Com­pa­nies, which led the round, with a lit­tle help from ear­li­er investors. Moontoast’s total fund­ing now tips the scales at $14 million.

The Mar­tin Com­pa­nies’ MD Les Wilkin­son said, “Moon­toast is a clear leader in the rapid­ly chang­ing social adver­tis­ing mar­ket, offer­ing a scal­able, com­pre­hen­sive rich media plat­form that deliv­ers demon­stra­ble social ROI by cre­at­ing deep­er brand engage­ment with­in today’s dynam­ic social landscape.”

The new funds will enable Moon­toast to fur­ther devel­op its Social Acti­va­tion Plat­form, which has just been updat­ed, grow its busi­ness devel­op­ment, sales and client ser­vices and expand its prod­uct devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing teams. All of this should allow the com­pa­ny to take a sig­nif­i­cant step clos­er to reach­ing profitability.