Never heard of them before this...

According to the press release, they are a big SEO company

not a search engine, what did you mean by

"Wonder how this will change things"

Do they do something else?

They are one of the biggest in the edu lead gen space (along with Quinstreet & ClassesUSA). I dont think they do much in SEM for clients even though they project as one in that press release!.

I don't see SEO listed as a service on their site or in the press release...all the verbiage points to search engine marketing & marketing optimization, etc, as in managing paid listings.

Can somebody stickymail me where it says they provide SEO as well? I must need more coffee.

Sorry, I used SEO to cover the wide variety of functions carried out by members of this August forum :-)

Which is what Vantage does, actually, I suppose there might be a couple of Search engine owners here ,,,

They don't do any SEO in terms of helping to optimize for copmanies that are looking for SEO/SEM services.

They are a direct competitor to Quinstreet. Mark ( the CEO ) of Venture has been in the edu game from the beginning.

Wonder why they needed 70 million. I know that his company was kicking some serious butt in edu.

Maybe they are looking to grow outside of Edu.......

Search engine optimization - as in, improving your site & popularity to perform better in algorithmic search results, is one thing. Search engine "tuning" (not sure the technical term) to improve user experience, average clicks per query, and lower net abandonment rates, etc, is another thing.

From the sound of it, the guys at Vantage would be competitive with QS, Adteractive, Adchemy, bluelithium, classesusa, etc. Potentially this funding is to help take their product more main stream to compete with did-it, efronteir, performics, etc...but, from the sounds of their site, it doesn't (yet) sound like they have the kind of large scale systems to do more generic & robust bid optimization for 3rd parties.

I get that they've been in the biz for about five years now, and haven't taken any external financing prior...but, this seems like a huge number to throw at a company.

My limited understaning of such things is a first round will net the investors around 30%...which means, this investment puts these guys worth around $210 million.

Very interesting stuff. Will be curious to see if they provide better collateral on their SEM services after a few weeks with their new found liquidity. :)

Jeremy a 20-30% is usual for a normal A round, this certainly can not have been a normal A round. Would be surprised if capital wouldn't be used for acquisitions off some kind, and company isn't large enough for pre-ipo investment either with 50 people. (have happened find it unlikely in this case though)

BTW also don't forget pre and post valuation in the counting ;)

So, if you can't be G or Y, be a V?

Interesting biz model. Many on this board have seen the potential in this. But, sheee, what a marketing marvel--Y and G build a system to sell contextual ads, but many people are too lazy or busy or something to figure out how to use it effectively. So, V adds another layer on it and raises $50 million grow their concept.

And, it is really unfair of me to say their clients are lazy. It does take time and some expertise to run a contextual ad program.

I just hope they have the ethics (and biz smarts) not to work for people putting out misleading ads, ruining the party for all of us--publishers, marketers and especially consumers.

Vantage Media executes better than anyone else in that space.

Congratulations Mark, well done.