Clickable Raises Another $3 Million, Officially Adds Jonathan Miller to Board
Advertising technology startup Clickable has raised another $3 million from its lead investors Union Square Ventures and Pequot Ventures, in a follow-on round to the $3 million it raised last July, confirms CEO David Kidder.
Context & Ripple Effects
Clickable launched in July 2007 with a platform that simplifies online search ad campaign management for small businesses, raising an initial $3 million from Union Square Ventures and Pequot Ventures, then showcased its data normalization service at TechCrunch40 in September. The new $3 million is a follow-on from the same two lead investors, taking the young company to roughly $6 million raised within months of launch.
The headline addition is governance rather than just cash: former AOL Chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller officially joins the board, a move MediaPost flagged the same day. It lands while Miller is separately preparing a buyout fund with Ross Levinsohn aimed at acquiring Internet startups, making his presence on a seed-stage ad-tech board notable for where he thinks value is forming.
First-order effects
- Clickable's war chest doubles to about $6 million inside five months, letting CEO David Kidder scale the small-business search-ad platform beyond its launch footprint.
- Jonathan Miller's board seat hands Clickable direct access to deep media-industry relationships at a moment when the company is still establishing credibility against incumbent search-marketing tools.
Second-order effects
- Union Square Ventures and Pequot doubling down so quickly signals to other investors that simplified search-ad management for small businesses is a fundable category, inviting competing entrants and pressuring existing SEM tool vendors to simplify their own offerings.
- Miller's dual role — startup board member and co-founder of a pending Internet buyout fund with Levinsohn — positions him to shape which ad-tech companies get acquired, not just advised.
Third-order effects
- If veteran media executives keep converting their operating careers into early-stage board seats and buyout vehicles, the line between old-media leadership and venture-backed ad-tech blurs into a standing talent-and-capital pipeline.
- A wave of well-funded startups attacking the same small-business search-advertising layer points toward consolidation, with the survivors likely determined by whoever normalizes campaign data across Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft most convincingly.
The trend: Late-2007 ad-tech funding is concentrating on tools that abstract away the complexity of search-engine marketing for small businesses, with ex-media executives supplying both capital and legitimacy.