REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 13, 2014) - Turn (turn.com), the marketing software and analytics platform, today announced it has raised $80 million in Series E funding led by two of the world's largest investment firms. New investors also included ClearBridge Investments, Firsthand Technology Value Fund (NASDAQ: SVVC), Northport Investments and Pine River Capital Management. Current investors Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, Shasta Ventures and Focus Ventures also participated in the round.
Turn's software helps global marketers plan, execute, and analyze cross-channel digital marketing campaigns. The Series E proceeds will accelerate investment in the company's technology platform, data science and machine-learning algorithms, and cross-channel and data-focused products, as well as its continued global expansion.
The new round of financing comes at the culmination of a record year for Turn. During 2013, Turn made significant investments in and enhancements to its team, technology and products to increase the return marketers receive from using its software. This resulted in the achievement of milestones that included:
- Finishing 2013 EBITDA positive
- Growing to 350 employees across five continents with more than 20 offices worldwide
- Expanding advertising reach to more than 1.3 million display, video, mobile, and social advertising bids per second while delivering more than 1.5 trillion ads per month
- Extracting real-time insights from nearly 1.3 billion anonymous user profiles
- Increasing total global infrastructure capacity by 8x over 2012
- Filing 20 patent applications
- Releasing more than 100 updates to 15 real-time machine-learning algorithms to improve brand reach and marketer return on investment
- Ending the year with over 120 partners integrated into its platform
"Turn is helping global businesses unlock new opportunities for growth by providing the real-time insights that enable them to find, understand and communicate with their most valuable audiences -- at the right moment, on the right device, and at the right time," said Bill Demas, president and CEO, Turn. "We're pleased by the addition of these new investors, and the re-commitment of our existing ones, as we accelerate Turn's growth and global expansion in 2014."
"Turn has created an impressive platform, a top-ranked team, and a rapidly growing global business," said Kevin Landis, CEO, Firsthand Technology Value Fund. "We look forward to a great partnership and are excited about the development of the company's position and business opportunity at the nexus of marketing and technology."
"Norwest has a longstanding commitment to the Turn team, which has built a clearly differentiated software offering that helps enterprises to engage their customers and see the greatest return on their marketing investments," said Jeff Crowe, managing partner, Norwest Venture Partners. "We are encouraged by the company's stellar track record and are confident in Turn's leadership and potential in the 'post-ad-tech' landscape -- with expanded offerings, worldwide operations, and end-to-end solutions that deliver meaningful results to marketers."
With this Series E round, Turn has raised over $135 million. Barrett Cohn and Michael Sobel advised Turn and led the private placement.
Turn provides three real-time marketing applications: Audience Suite, an enterprise data management and audience planning platform; Campaign Suite, a digital media execution platform for video, mobile, social, and display advertising; and DataMine, a data exploration, optimization and warehousing solution purpose-built for marketers. Turn works with the world's top brands, agencies and trading desks, including Accuen, Aegis, AMNET, Chrysler, Experian, Microsoft, OMD, Thomas Cook, Toyota, Travelers, Verizon, VivaKi and Zales.
About Turn
Turn delivers real-time insights that transform the way leading advertising agencies and enterprises make marketing decisions. Our integrated cloud platform enables data management, cross-channel advertising, and advanced analytics from a single login, along with point-and-click access to more than 120 integrated technology partners. Turn is headquartered in Silicon Valley and provides its products and services worldwide. For more information, visit turn.com or follow @turnplatform.