A year ago, we on report­ed the launch of “Uber­Ads”, the nifty new mobile ad tar­get­ing sys­tem devel­oped by Pasade­na-based mobile adver­tis­ing start­up Uber­Me­dia (basi­cal­ly, it’s a plat­form that lever­ages social and loca­tion sig­nals for brands and mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies, help­ing them to dri­ve mobile ad sales more effec­tive­ly). One year lat­er, where is Uber­Me­dia heading?

Cus­tomized mobile ad targeting

Well, onwards and upwards is the short answer. Last month, the four-year-old start­up raised a fur­ther $8 mil­lion in ven­ture fund­ing from media and enter­tain­ment investor Gor­don Craw­ford and Blue Chip Ven­tures, bring­ing its invest­ment total to a prince­ly $34.5 million.

Its deci­sion to diver­si­fy from an exclu­sive focus on cre­at­ing social apps to build­ing an effec­tive mobile ad tar­get­ing sys­tem appears to have paid off (although it still offers Twit­ter apps Echo­fon, Plume and Uber­So­cial). Ear­li­er this year, the startup’s Chief Rev­enue and Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer, Michael Hayes, told TechCrunch jour­nal­ist Antho­ny Ha that Uber­Ads pulls data about user loca­tion and tweet­ing inter­ests (culled from the company’s social apps) and uses it to iden­ti­fy their con­sumer inten­tions. The plat­form then draws from that data to opti­mize cam­paigns and help mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies and brands to reach the most desir­able audiences.

Rein­vent­ing mobile adver­tis­ing

With the addi­tion­al $8 mil­lion safe­ly in the bank, UberMedia’s CEO Bill Gross pro­claimed that the startup’s mis­sion was no less than “to rein­vent mobile adver­tis­ing.” And when you con­sid­er the fact that the startup’s rev­enue soared by 300 per­cent last year alone, and its plat­form Uber­ads now reach­es over 400 mil­lion devices glob­al­ly and 4 bil­lion impres­sions every month, his claim doesn’t sound remote­ly fanciful.

Gross con­tin­ued:

“Lever­ag­ing the unique tech­nol­o­gy we’ve built into our Uber­Ads plat­form, we can now tar­get a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual device to serve the pre­cise ad or offer to the right per­son at the right time, mak­ing adver­tis­ers happier.”

The fig­ures strong­ly sug­gest that the plat­form does what it says. Uber­Me­dia con­sis­tent­ly achieves ad per­for­mance results which are between five and ten times the indus­try aver­age. And its name is seri­ous­ly catch­ing on: some of the biggest brands in auto­mo­tive, elec­tron­ics, enter­tain­ment, pack­aged goods, retail and trav­el have used it for their mobile adver­tis­ing campaigns.

The new mon­ey will be ploughed into expand­ing the company’s prod­uct offer­ings and posi­tion­ing it for more growth this year and beyond.