TubeMogul's first day on Wall Street started off with a pop of the champagne cork—and was followed by a huge jump in stock price. The ad tech company held its public stock offering today at the Nasdaq exchange, and shares were up nearly 50 percent by noon.
TubeMogul is a software company with brand and agency clients, who use its service to buy online digital video ads. Its CEO Brett Wilson was in New York today to kick off trading in his newly public company.
Yesterday, TubeMogul set the price of shares well below the expected value, partly because of uncertainty in the ad tech market. A number of companies that have taken the public route have been struggling—Millennial Media, Tremor Video and YuMe, to name a few.
TubeMogul sold shares at $7, when originally it expected to ask for up to $13.
The lower price worked out for first-day investors whose shares were worth $10.35 by noon.
By selling stock, TubeMogul raised $44 million. Wilson actually bought shares in the company, 15,000, at the IPO price of $7.
"I'm a big believer in our team, in our differentiated position in the market, and the massive opportunity that's in front of us," Wilson said today.
Brands like Mondelez International use TubeMogul software along with their media buyers to execute digital video campaigns. Wilson said the company is committed to brand advertising and could expand to other media beyond video.
Also, the company is interested in using programmatic methods of buying television ads.
"There's an opportunity to automate buying video ads across all screens including television," he said.
In the first three months of the year, TubeMogul saw $48 million in media spend through its software, a year-over-year increase of 194 percent.
At today's stock price, TubeMogul is valued at about $240 million.