Comcast has upped its investment in targeted ad startup TidalTV, participating in the latter’s third round of financing, which netted it $30 million.
The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation by Valhalla Partners, Comcast Interactive Capital, which first invested in TidalTV in its second round of financing, which brought in $16 million. TidalTV took in $15 million in its first round.
TidalTV provides a platform-independent system for ad management, consumer targeting, decision management, and ad serving. The company describes its system as dependent on the ability to provide high-quality analysis on third-party demographic information, and then being able to deliver highly targeted advertising.
The TidalTV system appears to have been developed completely independently from any activity being conducted by Canoe Ventures, the cable consortium charged with developing a common ad platform for the industry. TidalTV specifies that it operates in the online video space, suggesting that TidalTV could be a complement to whatever comes out of Canoe.
TidalTV has previously stated its intention to get into the mobile advertising space as well.
The online video ad space appears hot. Another venture-backed operation called Tremor Media recently got into the online video ad space with the acquisition at the end of last year of a company specializing in that technology called ScanScout. In February, Tremor Media expanded into mobile advertising with the purchase of a company called Transpera.