Trada announced today it has closed a $9 million Series D financing from Foundry Group and Google Ventures. The funding will support the continued rapid expansion of Trada's paid search and third-party Facebook advertising marketplace, built on the Facebook Ads API.

Trada's is the only performance-based expert marketplace where multiple experts build, manage and optimize advertisers' campaigns on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Facebook. Both businesses and agencies leverage the world's best search marketing and Facebook advertising experts through Trada's marketplace. Trada's experts work collaboratively and competitively to build the best campaigns and earn money on a performance basis by generating profitable clicks, conversions and social interactions such as "likes" on behalf of businesses.

Trada will use the funding to expand its creative marketplace, recently launched to support its new Facebook advertising solution. Successful Facebook campaigns test and rotate ad creative on a constant basis to counter the decline in click-through rate that most ads experience over time. Most advertisers don't have the expertise to produce ad creative (images) or understand what types of creative will perform best on Facebook. In addition, the traditional model of pay per-image or per-hour creative work is incompatible with the frequency of production and testing required for success on the Facebook platform. For the first time, Trada enables graphic designers to generate hundreds of relevant ad images for Facebook campaigns running in the Trada marketplace while producing earnings on a performance-based royalty for every click or conversion generated by the ad, at no cost to the advertiser.

Trada plans to extend the creative marketplace concept into other types of digital advertising such as search retargeting, display and mobile ads in the future.

"I couldn't be happier with the progress we've made over the past year, including the addition of Facebook advertising to our marketplace," said Niel Robertson, founder and CEO of Trada. "Since launching Trada nearly two years ago, we've helped more than 500 advertisers successfully run paid search and Facebook campaigns, and created a significant source of income for thousands of paid search and Facebook advertising experts and designers. This funding will help us build on that incredible success."

"Trada's ability to achieve massive scale through its global community of advertising experts creates a business that is becoming a leader in the online advertising services market," said Seth Levine, Managing Director of Foundry Group. "We worked hard with Niel and Rich to close this funding as an inside round to maximize our position in the business and remove any barriers to Trada's success."

"The challenges associated with online advertising for businesses that lack the resources and expertise to successfully run campaigns themselves continue to grow in scale and complexity," said Rich Miner, partner, Google Ventures. "Trada's unique model is the ideal solution for those businesses and we're excited to help them build a powerful leadership position in digital advertising."

About Trada

Based in Boulder, Colo., Trada is the world's first online advertising services marketplace, where a diverse community of digital advertising experts (Optimizers) and graphic designers (Creatives) work and are paid on their performance. Businesses and agencies who run their online advertising campaigns on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Facebook through Trada will have multiple Optimizers and Creatives working on their campaign at the same time. The diversity of thinking, expertise and sheer force of human power that come from a group of people working in a performance-based market get results an individual or software application could simply never achieve. For more information, please visit www.trada.com.

About Foundry Group

Foundry Group is a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage information technology, Internet and software startups. In addition to providing the necessary venture capital to get a company up and running, Foundry Group is committed to leveraging their experience in starting and growing companies, expertise in the technology industry, and network of relationships to help great entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies. Foundry Group is based in Boulder, Colorado, and invests in companies located across the United States. For more information, visit www.foundrygroup.com.

About Google Ventures

Google Ventures is the venture capital arm of Google Inc. We seek to discover and help develop great companies, and believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. Our investments range from seed to late stage, across a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, digital media, software, hardware, and biotechnology. We embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the proverbial garage to global relevance.