Visual IQ Nabs $12M Series B for Ad Optimization Software

Needham, MA-based advertising software startup Visual IQ is revealing today that it has raised $12 million in Series B funding, just three months after CEO Manu Mathew told me the company was planning to raise a second round.  The money comes from Boston-based Volition Capital and return investor Fog City Capital, which led the company’s 2010 Series A round.

Mathew left his job at the ad agency Carat to start a company that could automate the process of determining and allocating advertising spend. Visual IQ launched in 2006 and now offers a suite of tools that track which advertising channels are most influential on customers and informs companies how to get the most bang for their marketing buck. The new funding will go to “product innovation and sales growth,” according to today’s announcement. Visual IQ also has an analytics team in San Francisco and is planning to staff up in New York to be closer to some of its customers—which span the advertising, financial, and consumer industries.

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.