How can you not LOVE the ticker symbol $TUBE …and if Al Gore invented the internet how could he have not locked down this ticker symbol?

The web video trend is super buzzy thanks to last week’s news that Facebook $FB is buying LiveRail for reportedly between $400 million and $500 million. I’m excited. I have a lot of skin in the game with one company in the IPO process: TubeMogul (which counts Facebook and LiveRail as customers). More on that later.

Given that LiveRail’s raison d’être is all about serving the best video ads possible, Facebook’s interest is clearly data, data, data — and monetization by association, of course. As the world moves mobile and social, you can expect more LiveRail-like acquisitions and IPO’s focused on helping brands and web industry leaders optimize around infrastructure and advertising.

Note that LiveRail, reportedly on track to book $100 million in revenue last year, was at one time toying with the idea of a public offering. Instead it opted sell, which underscores a broader sense of market trepidation among companies in the tech sector. There have been some red hot IPO’s in 2014, but March and April proved to be really bad months for certain tech sectors.

Take a look at the 1-day performance of all the technology IPO’s in 2014.

First day performance of Tech IPO's in first half of 2014. $SPY $QQQ (via Quartz) http://stks.co/d0iMM

— Kas (@jackdamn) Jul. 2 at 04:30 AM

Though the IPO window has reopened a bit, the volatility has made actors in the pipeline nervous — think commodity product-makers Box and Square — as good prospects get lumped in with the bad.

Now back to TubeMogul. The company filed their S-1 in March when the IPO market was on fire. Though the IPO market has cooled since then, I, highly biased investor that I am, think TubeMogul is still a strong candidate. They have a solid business and don’t actually need to go public. In my opinion, companies that don’t depend on the capital raise of an offering are often the best buys in a weak IPO market.

Before I get too pitchy on you, let’s talk about TubeMogul’s risk factors. First, ad-tech is a complex sector and Rocket Fuel ($FUEL), was the darling of this world until the March implosion. Second, TubeMogul is relatively young as far as businesses goes. Though it started in early 2007, it didn’t start earning a substantial amount of revenue until late 2011. And don’t forget about tech heavyweights such as Google, AOL, and Adobe, which are listed as TubeMogul competitors in the S-1.

The company also relies somewhat on relationships with advertising agencies and must partially work around the less-than-ideal process of insertion orders, an obstacle for most players in the ad-tech space, as Greycroft VC Ian Sigalow noted back in February.

The one knock on Rocketfuel, which is actually a knock on every adtech company, is that they are not achieving the big vision of advertisers using their platform directly to buy media. Like every other ad network, Rocketfuel is currently bought campaign-by-campaign using insertion orders. The public market expects them to transition to a software model that is used in-house by clients. Unfortunately I think this vision is still 5-10 years off.

Based on my read of the latest S-1, TubeMogul has a software-as-a-platform model that is working and can be applied beyond digital — read: TV. In the first quarter, 73 percent of total spend (what clients spent through the platform) came from self-serve (Platform Direct) clients, which helped the company have 72 percent gross margins and a net loss of less than $1 million (down from $1.8M). Nice. Plus, I’ve seen the team hit every quarter since I made my investment.

When it comes to automation in advertising, a trend that has in my opinion crossed the tipping point, TubeMogul’s vision around automating the purchase of TV ads makes it a standout in an increasingly competitive space where billions are bound to made.

Take a read of this presentation on the future of TV when you have a moment as well. Tubemogul is at the center of this trend.

Most importantly to me, Brett Wilson and his now large and awesome team have hit every yearly milestone and goal since I invested back in 2007. Great events do take time.

Image credit: Matt Biddulph/Flickr