Rubicon has raised over $42M in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures and GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund. Tags: rubicon project merger acquisition investment banker advertising software technology serve Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project , the online ad optimization firm headed by Frank Addante , announced this morning that it has hired investment banker Allen & Company . According to Rubicon, Allen & Company will work with the company to "exploring options for ongoing business growth initiatives" including strategic acquisitions,

Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project , which supplies ad optimization software to web publishers, announced today that it has released a new version of its VANTAGE Firefox browser plug-in, which helps provide its publishers with revenue and impressoin statistics and other information. Rubicon--which is backed by a health $42M in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures and GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund--said the new software includes such features as allowing publishers to screen ads being shown on their web sites, ability to see what kinds of ads will

We caught Rahul in a more serious conversation, and spoke to him about his venture funded, location-based information startup and what it's up to, as well as got the story behind the firm's incubation at Clearstone Ventures. First, Once I had that, it was clear to me that putting some software linking that with the Internet would be very powerful. You're A few weeks ago, Rahul Sonnad --a serial entrepreneur who is best known for founding and selling thePlatform to Comcast--alternately confused and dazzled attendees at Twiistup, the Los Angeles tech conference, with a fake-stilted-Indian-immigrant and ukulele-singing-and-dancing studded pitch for his firm, Geodelic (www.geodelic.com).