Ad.ly Receives $5 Million Equity Investment and Appoints Industry Heavyweight Arnie Gullov-Singh as CEO

LOS ANGELES, May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Ad.ly, a startup company dedicated to in-stream advertising, announced today that the company has completed a $5 million round of equity funding led by GRP Partners, and includes new investments from Greycroft Partners and Matt Coffin (the founder of LowerMyBills).  In addition, Ad.ly has also appointed Arnie Gullov-Singh as its CEO.  

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Gullov-Singh was previously EVP of product, technology and operations at News Corp's Fox Audience Network, a group he co-founded 4 years ago and helped grow into one of the 5 largest display advertising networks in the US.  During his tenure he built large scale platforms for targeting and self serve advertising, and also led the acquisition and integration of advertising technology startup Strategic Data Corp.

"Ad.ly has experienced tremendous demand for our product and has put in place a very strong investor and management team to meet the growth challenges of the next few years," said Sean Rad, Founder & President of Ad.ly.  "When I first met Arnie, I immediately knew that he would be the perfect person to help scale our company."

Ad.ly's advertising platform enables marketers to pay influential content creators and publishers to send out targeted messages to their followers in the stream.  The company employs proprietary algorithms to match advertisements to publishers based on a combination of marketer objectives, publisher content and user feedback.

"The stream sits at the intersection of demand generation and demand fulfillment," said Gullov-Singh. "It's becoming the starting point for users to discover new products and services, which makes it extremely attractive for marketers.  I looked at the Ad.ly data and knew that I wanted to be part of this exciting growth story."

"The number one determinant of a startup's success is the management team.  When Sean suggested that we bring Arnie on board it was a no-brainer," added Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners.  "He's built systems like this at scale before.  We're thrilled to have him as part of the team."

Ad.ly enables marketers to buy ads via its self serve platform at http://www.ad.ly, catering to local and performance advertisers, as well as via its national sales team, servicing the major digital agencies. 

"Ad.ly has done a terrific job getting influential marketers and content creators to use its platform," said Dana Settle, Partner at Greycroft Partners. "Of all the approaches out there, Ad.ly's model is getting the most traction in the marketplace."

For more information, please visit Ad.ly.

About Ad.ly

Ad.ly provides a platform for placing targeted advertising in the stream. Ad.ly connects marketers with over 70,000 influential content creators to distribute targeted ads to over 45 million users in the stream.

SOURCE Ad.ly