Verve Wireless Gets $7M in Round Led by BlueRun Ventures

Encinitas, CA-based Verve Wireless, whose technology lets newspapers and other media companies publish their content and serve ads across a variety of mobile devices, says today it has raised $7 million in venture funding led by BlueRun Ventures of Menlo Park, CA.

The Associated Press news service, a previous investor in Verve, joined in the round with other existing investors. The AP also selected Verve’s wireless publishing platform for its AP Mobile News Network in 2008. Verve apparently launched its website about four years ago, and was offering its advertising-supported, multimedia news service on the Verizon Wireless network the following year, according to a statement in 2007. Verve now offers technology to distribute and manage news and targeted advertising across all mobile platforms, including iPhone and Android. Verve says its technology is used today by more than 750 leading media companies around the world.

Verve contends that mobile will become the dominant advertising and news channel for local media, and suggests its technology is becoming the dominant tool by citing a few statistics:

—About 7 million of Verve’s mobile news apps have been downloaded so far to mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Nokia, and Windows smart phones.

—More than 14 million readers used Verve’s mobile publishing platform to access news from mobile devices in July. The company says that was a 151 percent increase over the same period last year.

—During the same month, Verve says it served 150 million mobile news pages, a 105 percent increase year over year.

In addition to The Associated Press, Verve says its media partners include McClatchy Interactive, MediaNews Group, A.H. Belo Corp., Hearst Corp., Philly.com, Belo Corp., and Advance.net. The company’s mobile partners include Apple and Nokia, as well as carriers AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.