Social media advertising technology company Kinetic Social has raised $8 million in an initial close of a series A round of financing. While the equity financing was provided by Cincinnati-based Blue Chip Venture Company (BCVC), the venture debt financing came from Chicago-based Gibraltar Business Capital. According to Kinetic, the funding will further spur the social media ad company’s growth and will fuel new enhancement of its distinct market position.

Meanwhile, according to Kinetic, the company is also actively considering several offers to expand its Series A transaction with additional equity capital. Also, the venture debt from Gibraltar comes on top of a revolving working capital facility provided in mid-2012. The company was launched in 2011 with early stage capital provided by RBC Bank.

In a statement, Mark Wright, managing director of Blue Chip, said "Blue Chip has been watching this market for over two years now, waiting for the leader to emerge, and we feel Kinetic Social is that leader."

"Kinetic is unique in a number of ways: it is only one of several companies that can optimize social advertising campaigns across all the major social networks, and it has a distinct capability to marry that advertising with display and mobile campaigns; its proprietary data-based technique for enhancing its target marketing capabilities is entirely unique and is widely regarded as the most advanced in the market," added Wright.

Kinetic said that the funding from this series A transaction will specifically support product extensions centered around the company’s patent-pending core technologies, including its machine learning optimization engine, cross-channel data trend and analytics engine and self-service client platform.

Kinetic's CEO Don Mathis is looking forward to leveraging the new capital to further improve the product and expand the client roster. And Kinetic’s chief strategy officer Carree L Syrek, who joined the company in late 2011 from WPP's Mindshare, believes that it offers a distinct combination of technology, strategy and service.