Investment Round is our weekly update on which firms have secured new funding, which areas are seeing the most financing, and who is putting up the cash that enables these companies to keep pushing the capabilities of mobile marketing further.

Appboy lands $50m
Customer engagement platform Appboy has raised $50m in a Series D funding round.

Led by ICONIQ Capital, which has recently invested in Houzz, InVision, and Sprinklr, the round also saw participation by Battery Ventures, which led Appboy’s Series C round, and all prior major investors.

Appboy’s CRM software helps marketers collect data from across channels to create a single unified view of each customer, and follow up with real-time personalised messaging campaigns.

Founded in 2011, Appboy has over 175 employees across its three offices in New York, San Francisco and London. Its clients include Airbnb, Lyft, ABC News, Dominos and Urban Outfitters.

“This significant infusion of capital marks our next phase of growth, allowing us to execute on our product vision while we continue leading the charge to replace the incumbent marketing clouds,” said Bill Magnuson, CEO and co-founder of Appboy.

Amplitude turns it up with Series C
Product experience analytics company Amplitude has closed a $30m Series C investment round.

The round, which will be used to scale operations globally and build new solutions, was led by IVP, along with existing investors Benchmark Capital and Battery Ventures.

In the past 12 months, Amplitude has opened an office in Amsterdam and doubled its headcount to 100. It counts Microsoft, Twitter and PayPal among its clients.

“The future of building a highly successful business lies in product,” said Spenser Skates, CEO of Amplitude. “While the influence and importance of product teams inside large enterprises is skyrocketing, and product teams are now being held accountable for business metrics such as user growth and revenue, theyre stuck using solutions built for marketing that dont tell them how their products are being used and what features drive revenue. Many of these companies are turning to Amplitude because we are the only solution custom built to serve their needs.”

Verizon invests in eight companies for the future of digital media
Verizon Ventures has announced the eight startups chosen for its Media Tech Venture Studio incubator program, in partnership with R/GA.

Intended to represent the future of digital media and content, each of the chosen companies will receive $100,000 in funding, plus support from Verizon and R/GA and a space in its Alley co-working space in New York. The program will in November with a demo event, where each startup will have the opportunity to present to industry leaders, investors and press.

The chosen companies are Ad Lightning, which promises to eliminate ‘bad ads’; CognitiveVR, offering insights for VR and AR marketing experiences; GankStars, a mobile-first eSports organization; Imposium, a video personalisation service; ScoreStream, a local sports crowdsourcing platform; Streamroot, which specialises in OTT video delivery; Transmit.Live, which offers tools for livestream distribution, promotion, and measurement; and Vidrovr, a video content discoverability platform.

“Verizon is continuously looking for ways to stay ahead of the media innovation curve and the changing ways consumers interact and engage with content” said John Doherty, SVP of corporate development at Verizon and head of Verizon Ventures. “Partnering with R/GA Ventures and the new class of startups in the Media Tech Venture Studio allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of the digital media revolution while providing these startups with access to our advanced technology resources and acclaimed experience.”

$10m for Evergages 1:1 personalisation platform
Real-time personalisation specialist Evergage has closed a $10m Series C round of financing.

The new investment, led by Arrowroot Capital – which was also the lead investor in its Series B round last year – brings Evergage’s total funding to date to $31.5m.

Evergage offers a 1:1 personalisation platform to marketers, combining customer data, behavioural analytics and machine learning, to provide individualised and relevant experience on the web and in apps.

“With the industry’s most advanced and complete personalization platform, Evergage helps companies make 1:1 customer engagement a reality,” said Evergage CEO and co-founder Karl Wirth. “We look forward to driving more innovation and further expanding our business, so we can enable even more companies to cater to and delight their customers.”