Eyeblaster, an Israeli company headquartered in New York, develops several media-rich advertising formats (see examples here and here) and interactive ad features, as well as MediaMind, campaign management software for agencies and online advertisers.  Eyeblaster pulled out of its initial IPO filing in October 2008 citing the “market conditions” as a reason for the delay. Today, Eyeblaster notified the SEC of its intention to go public as detailed in the company’s S-1 Filing. Eyeblaster is trying to raise $115 million by selling stock. This is the exact amount it was trying to raise two years ago, in the initial IPO.

EyeBlaster Rich Media ad formats - will they be enough to attract $115 million in funding?

Joseph Tartakoff @Paidcontent posted a good analysis of the filing:

—Financial performance: The recession appears to have taken a big hit on Eyeblaster’s growth. Revenue inched up only two percent to $65.1 million in 2009. By contrast, sales had jumped 43 percent the year before.  Net income did however increase to $9.8 million last year, from $6.2 million, in part due to cost-cutting (Eyeblaster says it “focused on cutting costs given the uncertain global economic environment” during the first half of 2009). The company has $15.4 million in cash and cash equivalents.

—Ownership: Eyeblaster had raised about $40 million in funding, including $30 million in a round three years ago. Its main shareholder is Sycamore Technologies Ventures, which owns 33.9 percent of the company. Other big stockholders include Insight Ventures (22.6 percent), CEO Gal Trifon (8.1 percent) and co-founder Osfer Zadikario (6.2 percent).

—Use of funds: The company says it will use the cash for general corporate purposes, as well as possibly to “acquire or invest in companies and technologies”—although it says it has no immediate plans to do so.

—Stock: Underwriters include JP Morgan Securities, Deutsche Bank Securities, Pacific Crest Securities, FBR Capital Markets, ThinkEquity, and Broadpoint Capital.

This would be the seventh digital firm to go public in 2010 including Israel’s Vringo (see SEC filing) as well as GameFly, Everyday Health, Motricity, Lulu, and Reply.com. Can Eyeblaster pull it off this time?

Eyeblaster is an independent provider of online campaign management solutions and services to both advertising agencies and individual advertisers. The company targets online, mobile and in-game advertising using rich media ad formats. Eyeblaster was also one of the first avertising companies to tackle video monetization, though its level of success is unclear.

According to 24/7 Wall Street:

Eyeblaster listed nearly 7,000 brand advertisers using roughly 2,500 media agencies and creative shops across over 2,500 web publishers in more than 40 countries globally. The growth has been from a customer base of 245 in 2002 to 979 in 2007. Revenues for 2007 were $44.7 million, up from $27.7 million in 2006.

The IPO was led by Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank Securities, who acted as joint bookrunners. UBS Securities and Pacific Crest Securities served as co-managers in the deal. In terms of funding, Eyeblaster has raised $40 million in three rounds (according to Globes). In early 2004, Insight Venture Partners invested $8 million into the company . The additional $30 million were added in March of 2007 by several angels (including Jonathan Colver and Eli Barkat of B.R.M) and private equity funds.

Founded in 1999, Eyeblaster has 221 employees in 23 countries. The company is headquartered in New York and while the research and development center is in Ra’anana, Israel. CEO Gal Trifon is one of the four original founders. This is the first Israeli IPO in Nasdaq in a long time, and it’s also a corageous one, if you consider Eyblaster’s competition: Google/Double Click and Microsoft, to name a couple.

Source: Paidcontent.org

Globes Online reports that Quigo, the NYC and Israel based online contextual ad technology provider, is preparing for a Nasdaq IPO in early 2008.

Quigo has raised $30 million from Institutional Venture Partners, at a company value of $250 million, as part of the preparations for the offering, it says. It closed a $5 million first round in 2004.

By providing a real alternative to Google’s ad product, Quigo has earned a place amongst publishing giants such as ESPN.com, Forbes.com, ABCNews.com Time Inc, using a custom-version of Quigo’s service across their site portfolio. Time and Quigo estimate ad revenues through this cooperation to be over $100 million in the first three years of the partnership.

The company’s flagship product, Ad Sonar is a content-targeted advertising network that connects publishers and advertisers through an auction-based, pay-per-click marketing platform. Using Ad sonar advertisers can see the specific pages on which their ads will appear – usually on the best, most popular sites in their category. The product has been making steady gains in the contextual ad market since 2005.

Quigo was co-founded by Yaron Galai, now the company’s Senior Vice President and Oded Itzhak, who developed the propietary technologies.

Below is a recent two-part interview with Michael Yavonditte, Quigo’s CEO, courtesy of webmasterworld.com:
Part 1:

Part 2: