GOVERNMENT

Cardlytics has announced that it has raised $18 million in new equity to support its rapid expansion. New investors ITC Holdings and Kinetic Ventures led this round of financing and all previous investors participated including Canaan Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and Total Technology Ventures. Concurrent with the financing, Campbell B. Lanier of ITC Holdings and Kinetic Ventures has joined the Cardlytics Board of Directors.

"Our exceptionally strong direct marketing performance coupled with the rapid expansion of our Financial Institution footprint positioned the company to attract significant capital from strategic new investors," said Scott Grimes, CEO of Cardlytics. "Mr. Lanier, with his deep experience in growing and governing high growth businesses, is an exciting addition to the board."

The additional financing comes at a time when demand for the Cardlytics platform has surged among leading national and regional retailers and service providers. Cardlytics' transaction marketing platform is a strategic channel for advertisers to connect with consumers via the broadly used and trusted on-line banking channel. "Transaction marketing presents an enormous opportunity for retailers as its use of consumer transaction data allows them to target customer offers with an unprecedented level of accuracy," said Jason Green, Principal with the Cambridge Group. "Demand for Cardlytics' platform will continue to increase as more banks and retailers learn of this new channel's effectiveness."

Leveraging the Cardlytics platform, financial institutions will be providing retail offers to over 10 million consumers this fall. "We are working closely with our financial institutions to bring the benefits of transaction-marketing to all customers, even if they are not active on-line banking users. This influx of capital provides the resources to accelerate the introduction of our next generation of technology," said Lynne Laube, President of Cardlytics.

"We are seeing the Cardlytics platform and transaction marketing redefine the concept of direct marketing," said Lanier. "Retailers are able to increase loyalty and acquisition by accurately and efficiently presenting the most valuable offers to customers in a pay for performance model and financial institutions provide valuable rewards to their account holders at no cost."

According to Ken Gronbach, a generational marketing expert, recent CNBC contributor and CEO of KGC Direct, "With transaction marketing, retailers now have access to a channel that drives real and measurable value. It affords marketers with an unprecedented ability to reach all targeted audiences, but especially the challenging Gen Y segment, with relevant rewards that retailers fund only when generating incremental sales."

Cardlytics' innovative platform continues to win industry accolades. In July, the company was named a 2010 Red Herring North America Top 100 award winner, a prestigious list that honors the year's most promising 100 private technology ventures from the North American business region. In March 2010, Cardlytics was also named as a Top 10 Innovative Georgia Technology Company.

Morgan Keegan's Revolution Partners Technology Investment Banking Group acted as financial advisor to Cardlytics in its funding round.