Adfonic, Europe’s largest independent mobile advertising marketplace, has raised an additional £4.7m  in funding from its existing investors. The company says the funds will support its continued growth in Europe, N. America and Asia-Pacific, increasing headcount from 40 today to over 100 in 12 months time. Gordon Shields, the telecoms and environmental entrepreneur and investor, is one of the major backers in the funding round.

The latest investment follows a period of considerable growth for Adfonic which has seen the company, over the last 12 months, grow its revenues ten-fold; increase its network of publisher sites and apps to more than 8,000; and drive ad requests across the network to over 15bn per month.

Thousands of campaigns are run across the network each month by leading brands including Peugeot, Yell, Tesco, Skype, Groupon, Google and many more, giving them access to an estimated audience of 100m mobile unique users.

Adfonic is planning several new local offices are across Europe, N. America and Asia-Pacific by the end of 2011. The company will be making a series of hires across its advertising operations, product development, engineering and marketing functions – with headcount set to rise by 150 per cent within the next 12 months. It says that continued investment in product development will ensure the availability of additional tools and functionality to maximise advertiser and publisher performance.

Speaking exclusively to Mobile Marketing, Adfonic CEO Victor Malachard said the company had seen growth across its three core customer groups of individuals and small businesses, managed clients and media buying agencies. “Budgets are increasing across the board,” he said. “In the US, the average monthly budgets is in excess of $100,000 a month; in the UK it is £50,000 compared to £15 – 20,000 last year.”

Adfonic’s plans to grow its workforce from 40 currently to over 100 over the next 12 months may look ambitious. But 12 months ago, it employed just eight people. Malachard said the company would work hard to retain its original values and also said that it has no intentions of changing its core proposition. “We are a global mobile performance network, continually improving the tools on both the buy side and the sell side,” he said. “Our proposition remains the same. We now want to expand our footprint by getting people on the ground in local markets.”