The Orange-Publicis Venture Fund launched last week sealed its first deal yesterday, leading advertising company MyThings’s $15m round.
The Orange-Publicis fund, managed by venture firm Iris Capital, was joined by Deutsche Telekom’s corporate venturing unit T-Venture and venture firms Accel Partners and Carmel Ventures backing the company.
It emerged last week that Iris would be managing the $400m fund on behalf of France Télécom-Orange, the telecommunications company, and France-based advertiser Publicis Groupe. Other backer of MyThings are investment bank GP Bullhound and asset manager Dotcorp Asset Management, according to MyThings’ website. MyThings retargets internet shoppers to other areas so they buy more.
MyThings raised $6m in 2010 in its series C. At the time of the series C, news provider TechCrunch said the firm had raised $19m.
Denis Barrier, who is in charge of the deal for Iris Capital, said: "MyThings’ e-marketing solutions and disruptive technology produce one of the highest performance uplifts in the industry. With a market clearly heading toward performance and data-driven ad solutions, we regard myThings as a natural investment path. As strategic partners, we share a vision of driving innovation in the digital media industry, and believe great value creation can be achieved through significant partnerships between myThings and each of our sponsors Orange and Publicis."
Orange has been a client of MyThings for the last year, and is now extending that partnership to its Orange Ad Market launched in 2010.