Traffiq Raises $10M as Online Ad Spending Is Expected to Recover

TRAFFIQ LogoTraffiq, whose online advertising marketplace connects buyers and sellers of online media, said today that it’s received $10 million in Series B funding. The round was led Grotech Ventures and Greenhill SAVP, with existing investor Court Square Ventures also participating.

New York-based Traffiq’s funding comes amid forecasts of a rebound in online ad spending. IDC reported today that worldwide spending on online advertising contracted 5 percent in the second quarter, but the research firm expects to see signs of growth starting in mid-2010. Private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson issued an even more aggressive forecast last week, one that has U.S. online ad spend rising 9.2 percent to $23.8 billion this year. And when it comes to the rapidly growing social network space, eMarketer said last month that while it expects U.S. ad spending there to drop 3 percent to $1.1 billion in 2009, it sees it rebounding in 2010, to $1.3 billion, and rising to $1.4 billion in 2014.

But in the meantime, application developers like Slide have had to refocus their revenue efforts on higher-margin premium advertising. As the pool of app developers expands, so does the competition to get advertisers’ attention and secure advertising deals, putting downward pressure on the dollar size of the deals being made. So for the time being, app developers for social networks will still have to deal with the problem of plenty.

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