Contributed by Lisa Conklin, AAF Omaha Executive Board Member
In case you missed it, Ryan Pendell with Silicon Prairie News, posted a column titled ‘Why Silicon Valley Startup c1X Opened an Office in Omaha’. Read more below.
San Jose-based ad tech startup C1X has opened a new office in Omaha, Nebraska. The company was founded in 2014 by Mukundu Kumaran to improve the marketplace for premium advertisers and publishers.
“Our mission is to bring efficiency and data science to digital advertising,” said Perkins.
The current auction-based digital advertising model has served premium publishers and advertisers poorly, according to Perkins. C1X provides private marketplaces that offer direct and auction based ad buys with data-backed guarantees so advertisers and publishers know they are getting what they pay for.
“Today you still have a lot brands spending money not necessarily knowing how well their audiences are targeted,” said Perkins. “Buying with a guarantee that you reaching your users is a pretty novel concept.”
In 2015 the company raised a Series A round for $5.1 million. This October they raised an additional $8.5 million in their Series B round. They now have offices in New York City, India, Tokyo and Dubai.
“In just about two years we’ve expanded pretty widely,” said Perkins.
“The Silicon Prairie is real”
Kumaran founded C1X after his experience as an engineering director at Yahoo, according to TechCrunch.
“The reality is a large portion of our employees are former Yahoos,” said Perkins. “Many of us are from California. I was in the Burbank office for a while. Our founder worked for Yahoo. Our CTO worked for Yahoo.”
Yahoo’s Omaha data center and office employ over 350 people. The office serves as Yahoo’s hub for display and search advertising operations. The talent pool that Yahoo has tapped into in Omaha was a major appeal for the company, along with veteran advertising agencies like Bailey Lauerman.
“It’s certainly evident that the Silicon Prairie is real,” said Perkins. “This location gives us a really good base to serve the area, with a really healthy economy here, with a lot of large and mid-size companies that are spending a lot on advertising. We want to position ourselves to help them be more efficient with their spend.”
C1X’s Omaha office is located at the Scott Tech Center in the Aksarben Village neighborhood.
“We are looking for people more on the sales end, but I’m discovering there’s all these engineers here as well,” said Perkins. “I certainly see a huge potential for growth.”
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Ryan Pendell is the Managing Editor of Silicon Prairie News.
To see the original article, please click here.
