Already profitable, TapSense says its revenue grew 300% in one month

Mobile marketing company TapSense is coming off one hell of a month.

The advertising startup’s revenue swelled 300 percent in January compared to December, TapSense CEO Ash Kumar told VentureBeat. Kumar attributed the rapid growth to a few well-timed product launches, including TapSense’s introduction of a native ads marketplace in early January.

“At some point, that growth in not sustainable, but so far, so good,” said Kumar.

TapSense also launched a private real-time bidding marketplace last month, offering advertisers the opportunity bid on publishers’ slots for native, video, and full-screen interstitial ads. (TapSense doesn’t support banner ads.) Publishers, meanwhile, can control who they want to work with and define the ad units. Real-time bidding now accounts for 80 percent of transactions on TapSense, according to the company.

Related: Mobile advertising to grow 300 percent, hit $40 billion by 2018

Kumar declined to disclose TapSense’s precise revenue figures, but he noted that it was already profitable prior to January. He also expressed excitement that the first quarter of 2014 is off to such a strong start for the whole mobile advertising sector.

“Big brands have been spending a lot in TV, spending a lot in digital, and for the first time, they’re very serious in mobile,” said Kumar. “We’re talking about $10 million, $20 million, $100 million buys across mobile platforms.”

TapSense has worked with over 100 customers, including Fab, Amazon, and eBay.

Formerly at mobile ad company InMobi, Kumar cofounded TapSense with ex-Google engineer Amit Manjhi in May 2011. The San Francisco-based company raised a seed round later that year from XG Ventures, Maynard Webb, and Ron Conway’s SV Angel.