In January, MediaStay became the first French ad network to be approved by Facebook. Then, in the beginning of April, the company announced that it had raised €15 million ($21.5 million) to take its Tap-joy like game monetization solutions international – mainly in the US.
Today, MakeMeReach, a similar French ad network, is announcing that it too has raised money for international development. The company – which was approved by Facebook in January shortly after MediaStay – has just closed a €3 million round with 3 French funds, Alven Capital, Siparex and UFG-Siparex. The cofounders are still apparently the primary shareholders.
The company founded in 2009 currently counts some 25 employees and will be using the funding to double its team by the end of the year. MakeMeReach is planning to go after additional European markets and will be recruiting for their Italian, Spanish and German teams next month. However, rather than putting an local office in each of the foreign markets, MakeMeReach plans to recruit people with international profiles for their Paris office. Pierre-François Chiron, one of the cofounders of the company, says that this strategy isn’t that different from the one Criteo first used when expanding internationally. This was obviously before Criteo flat-out moved its HQ to the US last year.
Founded with just €7K, MakeMeReach not only develops Facebook ad solutions – which are used by companies like French social gaming leader, Kobojo – but also Facebook applications. One of the first applications developed by the company was for the NRJ Music Awards last year. While the new funding is primarily for the international development of the company’s ad network, the team is also planning to develop a management tool to better-target ads on the social network.
We could obviously compare the development strategies of MediaStay and MakeMeReach, both of which have recently closed funding to go international from France. However, the 2 companies differ in their approaches. MediaStay is focusing on the US market and already has a local team in San Francisco, whereas MakeMeReach is clearly avoiding the more mature Anglophone markets at this stage. The company says it will most likely go to the UK and Benelux at a later stage and has not yet made any statement about its plans to develop across the Atlantic.