Federated media's $50 million round: where will it go?

Chas Prince Edward, publisher and chief gross officer of FM, said the company will be investment in creative resources, good technology and event selling capabilities in order to offer publication partners more than just ad sales.

"If you're only merchandising IAB streamer ads and what-not, that doesn't require much engineering or human intercession," he said. "But [we want to] fulfill premium brand sponsorships, or populate a subdivision of our partners' Web sites and fill them with content. Those kinds of services are of a much higher value to marketers, but also require higher-touch executing."

Whether that means organic fertilizer growth or acquisition remains to be seen, nevertheless. "We don't have all the money spent yet," said Prince Edward. "But there might be some acquisitions around content or service offerings." The C round of support comes from Oak investing Partners, and reportedly gives the FM a $200 1000000 valuation.

Sausalito, CA-based FM, launched in June 2005, has ever sold itself as more of a stigmatization partner to its clients than other ad networks. It sells ads largely for blogs and content creators unconnected to any particular Web place (such as graffiti Wall, which is available on Facebook and other sociable networks) with an accent on battle and content.

Edwards pointed to FM's foray into back-end event production as an illustration of how it can help its clients build their trade name beyond the Web. The company also late helped blog client BoingBoing extend its brand onto telecasting.

Analyst Emily Riley from Jupiter Research noted that ad networks of FM's size --meaning those significantly smaller than marketplace leaders like Google or Yahoo -- need to focus on differentiation rather than reach or scale.

"They need to do two things: They need to get a lot of customers quickly, and they need to broaden their offerings," she said. "Advertisers don't want remnant inventory, so they need to work with publishers to provide more premium packages."

"These networks don't have billions of impressions, so they have to develop a voice or a niche or a killer app," she said. "And they can develop that in-house or snatch the little guy up for $5 million who can do it for you more easily."

Either way, Edwards said that his company now has the money in the bank to attempt many of its more ambitious goals. "This money isn't earmarked for anything yet, and we're looking for opportunities to accelerate our business and our publishers' business," he said. "Whether that means hiring people or acquisitions, well, we haven't figured that out yet."