Nativo Receives Series A Funding Led by Greycroft Partners to Support Growth of Advanced Native Advertising Platform for Publishers

LOS ANGELES, April 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Nativo (formerly PostRelease), a leading innovator in native advertising technology, announced today a $3.5-million Series A round of funding led by Greycroft Partners with participation from e.ventures and existing investor Signia Venture Partners. This new round of funding builds on a $1.8-million investment of seed capital from Signia and other angel investors.

"We have worked hard to build an amazing platform and, as a result, have received exceptionally positive marketplace feedback," said Nativo President and CEO Justin Choi. "The support for accelerated growth expressed by this latest round of funding is further evidence of the significant opportunities we see in the native advertising space. Greycroft's deep experience in media makes them the perfect strategic partner. We're excited to be working with them."

The focus of the Series A funding is on accelerating the expansion of the Nativo platform that enables publishers to easily activate and control native advertising across their media properties. Native advertising is one of the primary trends in digital advertising, yet a significant pain point for publishers seeking to deploy native ads in a way that is easy to scale across various content management systems as well as mobile and desktop devices. The Nativo platform is rich in technology, and the funding will support further expansion of the development team as well as additional publisher support and operations staff.

"Given our close relationship with publishers, we knew that native advertising was emerging as a major advertising category, and we were looking for interesting companies in this space. We were very impressed with the technology and traction that the Nativo team had already generated," said Alan Patricof, Managing Director of Greycroft. "The early feedback we've already received has validated our view that we are backing a category leader."

With Nativo, advertising operations costs to deploy native ads can be reduced since a piece of sponsored or branded content can be entered once and automatically formatted to be native across all of a publisher's sites. Each placement is matched to the look and feel of each publication, regardless of site type or device. The platform makes this process extremely easy, while facilitating the sale of native advertising with data for geographic and device targeting, auto-optimization, analytics and reporting, and support of third-party ad tags for tracking.

Nativo provides a platform for publishers to unlock a premium revenue stream, immediately monetize their mobile traffic and rapidly deploy native ads without having to incur the cost of building their own custom solution.  

About Nativo
Nativo is a rapidly expanding advertising technology company that connects two of the most significant trends in online advertising: branded content and native ads. The Nativo platform enables publishers to easily activate, deploy and manage content-based native placements across their media properties. Nativo extends the reach of branded content with never-before-possible scale, targeting and in-depth analytics. Already leveraged by over a thousand publications, Nativo has established itself as the leading platform enabling this next generation of advertising. For more information, visit www.nativo.net.

About Greycroft Partners
Greycroft Partners is a leading early stage venture capital firm focused on investments in digital media. With offices in the two media capitals of the world - New York and Los Angeles – Greycroft is uniquely positioned to serve entrepreneurs who have chosen us as their partners. Greycroft leverages an extensive network of media and technology industry connections to help entrepreneurs gain visibility, build strategic relationships, successfully bring their products to market, and build successful businesses. Greycroft manages $400MM and has made over 75 investments in leading companies including Babble, Buddy Media, Collective, Huffington Post, Klout, M5 Networks, Maker Studios, Paid Content, Pulse, and Trunk Club. For more information, please visit the Greycroft Partners website at www.greycroft.com.

About Signia Venture Partners
Headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, Signia Venture Partners is an early stage fund dedicated to helping passionate entrepreneurs realize their vision and build impactful, high-growth ventures. More information about Signia can be found at http://www.signia.vc/ or @signiavc.

SOURCE Nativo