REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Smaato (www.smaato.com), the leading mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company, today announced the closing of its second institutional round of funding (Series B). Aeris CAPITAL led the $4.5 million round, with an undisclosed partner and existing shareholders also participating. The capital will be used to grow the company's leadership position as the largest mobile advertising optimizer, and to grow its global presence.

"Our mission is to give mobile publishers a dependable mobile advertising solution for their worldwide inventory to maximize mobile revenues," said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and Co-Founder of Smaato. "We provide an innovative mobile advertising optimization and mediation platform that can deliver ads in 215+ countries for mobile web and apps. This new round of funding will help us further expand our network of now 33 ad networks globally and continue to provide the best possible choice and service to our customers. We have recently opened our Singapore presence and with the funding we will continue to strengthen our position in other regions."

So far, over 1.000 publishers have signed up to partner with Smaato to monetize their content and Smaato is managing close to 3 billion ad requests per month. Mobile publishers, mobile developers, ad networks and operators partner with Smaato to maximize mobile advertising with aggregation of multiple leading ad networks worldwide. Working with mobile ad networks on a global scale, Smaato has a unique offering to the market: relevant local ads combined globally in a single sign-up process at www.smaato.com.

“The mobile advertising market is growing rapidly and it has proved to be a profitable business even in recessionary periods. In fact, we have seen mobile advertising increase dramatically over the past 12 months. We see enormous potential to grow the business and our geographical offering,” continued Mr. Kruse.

Uwe Feuersenger, CEO of aeris CAPITAL said: “As demand increases worldwide for mobile advertising solutions, we see Smaato as the pioneer in the space, capable of leading a true change in the market. As investors, we're excited to work with the experienced Smaato team who are at the forefront of what we believe will be a huge and beneficial shift for both consumers and mobile companies alike.”