SAN FRANCISCO, Mobile advertising startup MoPub announced today the raise of a $6.5MM Series A investment led by Accel Partners and joined by co-investor Harrison Metal Capital. Both Accel Partners and Harrison Metal were seed investors and are 'doubling down' with this Series A.

The company was founded by former AdMob and Google product managers and engineers: CEO Jim Payne, Bryan Atwood and Nafis Jamal. MoPub is an ad serving platform for mobile applications and websites, allowing mobile publishers to effectively serve direct-sold rich media banner and interstitial ads in addition to optimizing their remnant inventory with networks.

As part of the financing, Rich Wong, Partner at Accel Partners will join the board. Rich has previously worked with, and led investments in, leading mobile companies such as Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, 3LM, GetJar and AdMob. MoPub is the first Series A funded company to emerge from AngelPad, the ex-Googler incubator. Rich Wong, Partner at Accel Partners said, "MoPub is part of a new wave of mobile ads companies that are moving the industry forward very rapidly. In a short time, they have put together a widely used product and an incredible team that I believe can build the next big mobile monetization company."

This financing is fresh on the heels of MoPub's announcement reflecting rapid adoption by mobile publishers, with MoPub having crossed the 1B monthly ads mark in June, just four months after the initial public launch in February. MoPub today has over 250 active publishers and is now doubling that number every quarter. MoPub has grown to twelve employees since their seed round late last year and has plans to double by the end of the year. Gartner's recent mobile forecast projects worldwide mobile advertising revenue to more than double in 2011 for a total of $3.3B and surpassing $20B by 2015, driven mainly by in-app display and mobile video advertising. "A lot of our traction has come from publishers who are looking for control over their mobile app monetization, so they can take advantage of these new higher value formats," said CEO Jim Payne.

The MoPub offering is a mobile analogue to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and AdMeld, recently purchased by Google in a $400MM transaction. It allows publishers to easily book and manage mobile rich media interstitials, banners and custom formats, whether on a direct sold basis or brokered through a network. Jim added, "we are seeing massive user adoption in mobile but the monetization is still a huge pain for everyone. It's nearly impossible for advertisers to reach the audiences that they want at scale today. We're building a very high capacity ad serving platform to address this and take advantage of the new opportunities presented by mobile formats."

Miniclip America signed on with MoPub in March to enable brand advertisers to run direct campaigns on Miniclip's iPhone games. John Egan, General Manager of Mobile, outlined the partnership as a reflection of the growing importance of the medium to brand marketers. "The MoPub solution gives us the ability to extend the ad products, transparency, and performance of our online programs to our mobile content. We think mobile now is like the online space ten years ago; we expect brands will migrate away from bulk impressions and place more emphasis on quality environments. MoPub is our engine to power that transition."

MoPub is open to any mobile publisher and serves ads across Android, iOS and mobile web platforms. For more information, please visit the MoPub web site at www.mopub.com, or follow MoPub on twitter at www.twitter.com/mopub. MoPub is hiring across engineering, business development and operations for its headquarters in San Francisco, CA and sales office in New York, NY.

About Accel Partners
Founded in 1983, Accel Partners is a leading venture capital and growth equity investment firm, working with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today manages over $6B globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, London, New Delhi, Bangalore and China through our partnership with IDG-Accel.
Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their
categories, including Facebook, Groupon, ComScore, AdMob, Atlassian Software, Cloudera, Diapers.com,
Getjar, Etsy, Kayak, Macromedia, Modcloth, MetroPCS, Playfish, QlikTech, Rapt, Real Networks, Redback Networks, Riverbed, SunRun, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, and others.

About Harrison Metal
Harrison Metal invests in seed and early-stage technology companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs, serving the consumer and small business markets. Based in Silicon Valley and led by Michael Dearing and Erik Rannala, Harrison Metal works closely with founding teams to turn technology into high-impact products that power lasting, successful businesses. The team's investments include Aardvark, AdMob, DocVerse, Lumos Labs, ModCloth, Polyvore, and Yardsellr.

About AngelPad
AngelPad is a startup incubator based in San Francisco. Founded in 2010 by a team of ex-Googlers, AngelPad helps web-technology startups build better products, attract additional funding and ultimately grow more successful businesses. http://angelpad.org