Mobile advertising service provider Nexage has closed $4 million in Series A funding from BlackBerry Partners Fund and GrandBanks Capital.

The funding will be used by Nexage to scale its mobile advertising platform to meet the needs of its global customer base and to strengthen its sales and marketing efforts. Concurrent with the funding, Mike Baker has been appointed as chairman of the Nexage Board of Directors, while Matt Golden, partner at BlackBerry Partners Fund, and Ryan Moore, general partner at GrandBanks Capital, will be joining the Nexage Board of Directors.

"We've looked at the mobile industry, talking to mobile enterprise experts, and we brought on Mike Bakeer, whose previous company was Enpocket, because he's a thought leader in the space," said Dev Gandhi, CEO of Nexage, Boston, MA. "We're building next-generation mobile advertising company.

"Our AdMax mobile advertising optimization and mediation platform helps our clients monetize their content and traffic," he said. "We're trying to create a mobile marketplace that includes the mobile Web, applications and SMS to form a cross-media platform across various ad networks.

"We allow mobile publishers and developers to work with any ad networks they choose, so its an open mobile marketplace."

The BlackBerry Partners Fund is focused on the investment opportunity in applications, services and supporting infrastructure for RIM's BlackBerry devices and other mobile platforms.

The fund invests in companies developing applications that make smartphones a compelling platform for media, commerce, enterprise, entertainment and lifestyle applications.

Established in partnership with Softbank Corp., GrandBanks Capital invests in early-stage technology companies -- including Enpocket, now owned by Nokia -- located primarily in the eastern part of the United States and Canada.

Nexage's AdMax Gateway is a hosted ad-optimization service that enables carriers and media companies to control the advertising deployment within their mobile channels. It serves text, banner, in-application and video ads.

Currently AdMax powers mobile ads for a number of publishers, broadcasters and carriers, including Digg, Divx, CBS Sports and CBS Mobile, Ipsh, Wireless TV, Investor Central, Mozes, Millennial Media, AOL's Third Screen Media, Nokia's Enpocket, MyCorner and Versaly Entertainment.

Other clients include AccuWeather, iLoop Mobile Multiply Mobile, Germany-based mobile social network Pepperoni.de, location-based mobile social network MobiLuck and Publishers Clearing House.

"PCH is pretty aggressive at monetizing their iPhone applications," Mr. Gandhi said.

Nexage's initial product, AdMax is a mobile ad mediation and optimization platform that connects to multiple ad networks.

"In the last six months we've been adding a lot of publishers -- we're growing rapidly in terms of publishers, the number of ads we're powering and traffic clicking on those ads," Mr. Gandhi said. "We're deploying our platform for all of these major customers.

"We've seen huge uptake in our service, so we are using the funding to build a super-scalable technology platform and to expand our sales and business development team," he said.