TapCommerce Raises $10.5M To Compete In The Mobile Ad Retargeting “Land Grab”

Mobile ad retargeting startup TapCommerce is announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding.

When I first spoke to co-founder and CEO Brian Long earlier this year, he described the company’s approach to mobile retargeting (where ads are targeted based on user’s prior activity) as “very large amounts of data coupled with sophisticated statistical analysis.” This week he told me that TapCommerce is now being used by more than 50 customers, including more than 30 of the top 100 grossing apps.

Retargeting can be particularly important for e-commerce companies (who want to lure customers back to spend more money), so it’s not too surprising that TapCommerce customers include Fab, eBay, and Jackthreads.

Looking at the money that’s already spent on mobile advertising, Long continued, “Our major thesis is that at some point, all of these companies are going to say, ‘Okay we got the installs, we just spent $3 million, what’s happening now? How are we making money on these people?’”

Competitors are starting to emerge, but he suggested that they’re still trying to develop their basic technology, while TapCommerce already has a solid platform (though it will continue to spend money on product development). He also acknowledged that Facebook has started to add retargeting-style options to its mobile app ads, but he said that he’s not worried about the social platforms moving aggressively into retargeting – he sees them more as potential customers of TapCommerce’s technology than as competitors.

Still, he said he was glad to have raised a large round (and almost exactly a year after TapCommerce raised its $1.2 million seed round), because “part of this is going to be a land grab, just as it was on the web.”

The new funding was led by Bain Capital Ventures and RRE Ventures, with a strategic investment from Nielsen Ventures and participation from previous backers Metamorphic Ventures, Eniac Ventures, and Nextview Ventures. Bain’s Scott Friend and RRE’s Eric Wiessen have joined TapCommerce’s board of directors.