Audience Partners, LLC Secures Financing from QED Investors to Fuel Expansion of Data-Driven Advertising Product Offerings

FORT WASHINGTON, Pa., June 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --  Fort Washington-PA based advertising technology and media firm Audience Partners, LLC has secured a round of equity financing led by QED Investors, a fund created by Capital One co-founder Nigel Morris. This financing will accelerate the expansion of Audience Partners' innovative data-driven marketing solutions into additional commercial verticals, the acquisition of unique data assets, and the continued scaling of the company's technology and online media platform.

"While we started in the political market and continue to expand our capabilities and client lists in that space, we see large opportunities to leverage the data-driven insights and capabilities we have developed over the last few years in additional verticals," said Jeff Dittus, co-founder and CEO of Audience Partners. "QED Investors bring tremendous market knowledge and expertise in online marketing and 'big data' that will be invaluable as we expand our audience targeting platform."

QED Investors actively supports a portfolio of high-growth companies that utilize data to create innovative, different-in-kind products and services in information rich markets. The investment group provides a combination of capital, operational and strategic support to a number of companies in the data-as-a-service and advertising technology sectors, including 33Across, Spruce Media and Media Math thus making Audience Partners a prudent addition to its consortium.

"Audience Partners' success in the political sector has resulted from bringing cutting-edge online marketing techniques to political candidates and causes that had traditionally lacked access to the successful tools and tactics employed by the corporate sector," said Caribou Honig, the co-founder and partner at QED Investors. "The company's management team has done a spectacular job of identifying market opportunities and executing against them. All of us at QED look forward to working with the Audience Partners' team to support the continued expansion of their platform." 

Audience Partners' initial market vertical was the $8 billion U.S. political and advocacy advertising sector. Through its proprietary National Online Voter File™ and network of media partners that includes leading web portals, publishers and exchanges, the company's platform provides the capability to reach more than 130 million registered voters with display, video and mobile advertising.  Avowedly non-partisan, Audience Partners has licensed its data to a number of preeminent ad networks and publishers, as well as campaigns and clients working on both sides of the partisan divide. Through these partners, Audience Partners' platform has powered advertising efforts for more than 500 national, state and local campaigns and causes.

Today Audience Partners, which was the first to market with online voter targeting in 2008, combines proprietary data with a best-in-class technology platform and vast network of media partners to create value for agencies, advertisers, marketers and media organizations. The company's platform has evolved and now enables audience targeting and performance optimization across a wide universe of premium and real-time bidding (RTB) media sources – while leveraging both first party and third party offline data sets to deliver unprecedented results.

About Audience Partners

Audience Partners is a leading provider of data-driven interactive advertising and direct marketing solutions. Based in Fort Washington, PA, the company combines proprietary data assets with a best-in-class technology platform and vast network of media partners to create value for advertisers, marketers and media organizations.

Audience Partners believes in the efficiency and effectiveness of audience targeting, and the value that it provides advertisers and media organizations alike. The agency has developed its platform to simplify the complex ecosystem of data providers and online advertising technology vendors. The platform provides Audience Partners' partners and clients with unique, cutting-edge tools for harnessing the power of audience targeting, along with the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that the company's solutions are in full compliance with industry privacy practices.

Since 2008, Audience Partners has served more than 400 clients and three billion online ad impressions through its platform.

Additional information about Audience Partners is available on the company's website at http://www.AudiencePartners.com.

SOURCE Audience Partners, LLC