Freespee Raises €3.3M to Scale in Mobile Advertising

UPPSALA, Sweden, October 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Freespee Ads drives connected calls from smartphones -

Freespee, the European leader in call-based advertising technology and services, announces a new venture financing round of €3.3 million led by Sunstone Capital. Freespee plans to use the funding to continue its innovation in location-aware mobile click-to-call advertising as well as its rapid market expansion.

Freespee has gained market leadership in 15 countries reaching over 35,000 business advertisers. Its click-to-call analytics solution enables insights well beyond the click, offering advertisers and developers proven tools for converting mobile audiences into revenue.

Now, with demand soaring for simpler, more effective mobile advertising, the company is launching Freespee Ads, a turnkey solution that connects enterprises and business owners with mobile consumers in real time. Combining intuitive click-to-call rich media ad units, access to location data and a sophisticated set of call-filtering tools, Freespee Ads brings the possibility of one-click conversions to any smartphone.

"We are very excited by the opportunities in mobile click-to-call advertising, and how it can fundamentally change the way both small and large service businesses buy advertising in the mobile era," says Carl Holmquist, Founder and CEO of Freespee. "In the pilots we have conducted this year, our customers have experienced their first instance of proven and reliable return on mobile advertising spend.  We look forward to making Freespee Ads available to enterprise and business owners throughout Europe."

The new funding comes from Sunstone Capital, a pan-European early-stage investor based in Copenhagen with €600M under management. Existing investors, including the Finnish fund Inventure, also participated in the financing round.

"Freespee matches well with our strategy to invest in early-stage ventures with strong potential for global success," said Nikolaj Nyholm, Partner at Sunstone, who also joins Freespee's board of directors. "With the mobile advertising market clearly approaching a tipping point, we found Freespee uniquely positioned to set new standards on how businesses buy advertising to connect with mobile consumers. Their established leadership in Europe along with a proven culture of innovation, gives us great confidence that Freespee will be a leader in mobile advertising for many years to come."

To execute on its growth plans, the company will add customer development and support resources, establish commercial headquarters in London, and expand its development center in Uppsala, Sweden.

More information for media at http://www.freespee.com/press

Contact: press (at) freespee (dot) com - tel. +358-9-8860-2050