those clicks actually lead a consumer to do things like installing an application, buying a product, or liking a brand on Facebook. “Every couple of minutes, we can tell you and update the value-per-click of an audience,” says Calvillo.
Calvillo describes his company as “cash-flow breakeven,” in that it reinvests any profits quickly into new hires. Its headcount is up to about 40 people right now, coming from about 20 this past summer. And it has a big chunk of hires planned for the future. In August it raised a $3 million Series A round led by Rich Levandov of Avalon Ventures, and last year nabbed $600,000 in angel funding.
Nanigans’ Ad Engine seems to be scaling pretty quickly, with customers like T-Mobile, and games companies Atari, Kixeye, and Bigpoint. The startup announced earlier this month that it served 80 billion Facebook ad impressions in the third quarter of 2011, with an average of 10,000 impressions per second.
But it’s not stopping with enterprise customers, says Calvillo. It’s working on another release of the Ad Engine, which is a simpler, more lightweight version for mom-and-pop business owners to use for managing their Facebook advertising campaigns. Currently, the Ad Engine interface is relatively complex, and best left for the dedicated marketing professional at a company, says Calvillo. “We want to make it easier to use,” he says. “It’s really powerful. It’s like a Ferrari right now.”
He’s hopeful that the demand for his company’s technology will only grow with expected shifts in the advertising world. “We’re in a really exciting space,” Calvillo says. “People spend more time online, where there is less spent on advertising. Facebook believes that those ad dollars will move from TV to their platform.”
