• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 15, 2011

LiveIntent has raised $8 million in Series B funding led by Shasta Ventures to further develop its email ad serving platform featuring real-time display ad targeting. The platform supports a variety of devices, such as computers, mobile and tablets.

The funding round also includes Series A investors Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and Grape Arbor VC. LiveIntent plans to use the funds to expand its sales staff and build out technology. Shasta Ventures partner Jason Pressman joins LiveIntent's board of directors: Satya Patel, Matt Keiser, and William Raduchel.

The technology stack is built on a real-time ad server for email. Most email servers and platforms are campaign-based. Marketers must buy ads in a specific newsletter and deployment. With a tag inserted into the newsletter, media planners can make an ad buy across all the tagged newsletters. They don't have to go to each publisher, but rather buy media as if they were buying display ad units.

LiveIntent offers ad serving, demand-side platform and trading desk and exchange features. The ad platform supports RTB through a tag that pings the server when an email is opened. It serves an ad based on the recipient's location, device and other attributes. The platform doesn't require Flash or JavaScript or the user to download anything, and it works will all email service providers, according to Dave Hendricks, LiveIntent's COO. "We brought the capabilities of display ads to email," he said. "We added frequency control, geo-targeting, and day parting."

Hendricks joined LiveIntent from Datran Media, where he worked with LiveIntent's CEO and Co-founder Matt Keiser. But Keiser also co- founded Datran and became an investor in AppNexus, which raised millions last year from Microsoft.

LiveIntent has experienced growth in the past year, according to Hendricks. "We're growing 100% per month in terms of impressions, more than tripling since June," he said. "This month we will have served hundreds of millions of impressions."