Vibrant Media, an in-text advertising company which has grown from a $500,000 investment in 2000 to $100m revenues last year, is hiring a new chief financial officer in preparation for a possible initial public offering, writes FT Media Editor Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.
Jeff Babka is coming in from Sophos, an Oxford-based IT security company that had begun work on an IPO filing before its $830m sale to Apax Partners.
More tellingly, he was before that CFO of NeuStar, a communications services company, which earned IFR’s IPO of the year award for its $700m offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005.
Vibrant would join a list of possible IPO contenders, from Demand Media to LinkedIn, hoping that market conditions allow them to go public.
The company was started by Doug Stevenson, chief executive, and Craig Gooding, chief commercial officer, both former AOL Europe e-commerce executives and both Brits.
It has pitched in-text advertising – the commercial messages that pop up when your cursor hovers over a hyperlinked word in the text – as being able to “bridge the gap between search and display” advertising.
With clients including Microsoft, Unilever and Intel, Vibrant reported last month that its worldwide revenue was up 45 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2010, led by strong growth in the UK.
It is cash flow positive, with no debt, employs 230 people in 11 cities from Los Angeles to Hamburg, and claims to reach 170m monthly unique users.
In an announcement planned for Monday, Vibrant does not make its IPO intentions explicit, but its praise for Babka’s IPO credentials and public company experience means the message pops out of the page.
