Two pieces of investment related news surfacing early this week give entrepreneurs a realistic view of current valuations. Quick conclusion: if you want the really big payoff, the money today is in ad networks. Federated Media, which sells ads for blogs and other publishers, reportedly raised a $50 million round that valued the company at $200 million pre-money.Battelle, a former co-founder and editor of Wired and Industry Standard, has been a big-time evangelist and visionary of the trend that sees sites wanting to have more control over their ad inventory.Rather than just be satisfied with automated ads from Google or Yahoo, publishers are getting access to brand advertising dollars through syndication.This is something we discussed a few weeks back with ... [ Read more ]