San Carlos, Calif.-based Zimbio operates, according to comScore, the fifth largest entertainment news site, Zimbio.com, and seventh biggest online fashion and beauty destination, StyleBistro.com, collectively reaching an audience of 30 million unique users a month.

The Series B round was led by Menlo Ventures, which also spearheaded an initial round of $6.9 million in funding for Zimbio back in August 2007. (The company was founded in 2006.)

The latest funding is a combination of equity and debt financing, with original investor Draper Associates, as well as Great Oaks Venture Capital, Fenwick & West Investments and Comerica Bank also participating.

“This investment will facilitate development of new teams and technology at Zimbio and support its expansion into new markets,” said John Jarve, managing director of Menlo Ventures.

Trident Capital is the newest investor. In August, Menlo Ventures and Carmel Ventures invested $11 million with a commitment to invest an additional $4 million if needed. New York-based eXelate found Trident Capital to complete the round at $16 million with their contribution of $5 million.

Since eXelate raised its first $4 million round three years ago, the company has captured a lot of attention from publishers as well as advertisers for its data gathering.

The company has done a very good job at making alliances, something that is going to be very useful as the battles on Capitol Hill rage on next year. Several months ago, the company added two big names to its board: Martin Nisenholtz, the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) SVP of Digital Operations, and IPG’s Mediabrands Ventures CEO Matt Freeman.

Updated: In an e-mail response to some earlier questions, eXelate Chief Revenue Officer Mark Zagorski said that the company planned to do four things with the proceeds of the funding:

– Building out its technology around its audience access engine
– Increasing the functionality of that engine to help publishers package, protect and deliver data
– Building more outreach to consumers. The company is promising greater transparency as well as the ability for users to manage their data
– Enhancing the data pool, so that advertisers can target better

Asked about the company’s feelings about the rumblings on Capitol Hill and the insertion of a “Do Not Track” feature into users’ browers, Zagorski said that if users want to be able to access free content, then publishers will have to pay for it through advertising. “A key part of making advertising work is relevancy — driven by data. The challenge is that consumers haven’t had much transparency into this equation so we need to do a better job making this clear, giving consumers more control over the transaction and ensuring that we abide by clear self regulatory principles such as have been established by the Network Advertising Initiative [an ad network and data exchange organization] and the IAB.”

The best way to do this, while protecting the $20 billion-plus online ad business, is “via a strong, industry supported, self-regulatory initiative that compels all legitimate players to participate and leaves those who don’t play by the rules essentially ‘out of the game.’ The data protection tools, marketplace access processes and industry leading consumer transparency efforts that eXelate is driving enable the company thrive in an online world based on a more open transfer of consideration between consumers, advertisers and publishers.”

Naturally, regulators and privacy advocates have taken a different view of how onerous the Do Not Track regime would be. The industry is scrambling to portray itself in a better light and more controls and outreach of the kind are likely to be adopted. Whether that will mollify targeting critics, however, is another thing. But the more libertarian ethos likely to be ushered in with the next Congress gives the targeters a much better chance of beating back the most painful restrictions.

As part of Google

The second round closed at around $10 million, with previous investor Menlo Ventures and new investors, European VC firm Balderton Capital splitting the investment, our sources say. The valuation is about double of what it raised $5 million at last summer, so a significant bump up in a short period. Mog is looking for a GM to run the UK service now. The money was raised by media i-bank MESA Global, which has of late been doing a slew of fund raises, along with the usual lineup of M&A deals.

Mog.com had already raised a total $12.5 million from Menlo Ventures, Simon Equity, Universal Music Group and *Sony* Music in the last four years, including $5 million in August.

Last.fm has been amongst the leaders for a social music experience but doesn’t offer on-demand, Spotify has a fantastic on-demand experience but has little social experience – but Mog.com now has elements of both. Though it originated as a place for members (Moggers) to blog about music they like, in December it added All Access, an on-demand music subscription costing $5 a month.

CEO David Hyman spoke to our UK editor Robert Andrews last month at Midem (prior to the close of this funding), and wouldn’t detail take-up of its newly launched service, but a subscription that cheap could prove popular in UK. Spotify’s subscription costs £9.99 a month (for ad-free or mobile) in UK, and Hyman said: “We’ll be much cheaper than that. We don’t have to offset the burden of haemmorhaging per-track costs.”

Last.fm has not been successful in the U.S., despite being bought by CBS (NYSE: CBS), and the talk is that U.S. labels are adamant they will sanction only Spotify’s premium service, not the free, ad-supported offering. Like them, Hyman will be challenged to launch a service from scratch across the pond – but he was withering in his assessment of each…

– Spotify: “We’d like to do free, but the model doesn’t work – imeem just went out of business – the services are haemmorhaging money. The labels won’t let them continue to do free. Contrary to what you read, I don’t think you’ll be seeing that (free Spotify) in the States at all. Free’s cool, free’s like crack.” Could Mog.com partner with Spotify? “I don’t know why we’d want to. They’re losing a lot of money. You can do free, but that’s the easy thing, almost the booby prize.”

– Last.fm: “Last.fm never gave you the music” (it has playable tracks but, like Pandora, it’s a radio, not an on-demand, offering). “Once they got acquired by CBS, they haven’t done anything. It was cool back in the day.”

Unlike either of those, though, Mog.com has little recognition in the UK and will need to build its brand there.

The market is getting increasingly crowded for subscription music services, with the above, Sky Songs, Virgin Media’s forthcoming service, We7, upcoming Rdio and others all taking advantage of labels’ increasing embrace of legal digital services to launch their own version. The idea of unlimited downloads for a monthly tariff could challenge the a la carte download model pioneered, and still led, by iTunes Store – but many expect *Apple*, eventually, to launch a subscription package of its own.

Update: Balderton later confirmed its investment Friday morning, saying UK launch will come “by the end of the second quarter of this year, with a comprehensive catalog of music of approximately seven million songs”. It said 17 percent of free-trial users of Mog.com’s All Access service converted to paying for it.

Roku has raised at least $24 million over these four rounds, including a $6 million investment from Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX). The Saratoga, Calif.-based startup produces a Netflix-branded digital media player — but has also been signing on third-party content partners like Blip.tv and Amazon.

Launched in 2004, the company’s mostly teen registered user base has topped 30 million; CEO Cary Rosenzweig told VentureBeat IMVU generates more than $1 million in revenue each month. The bulk of that revenue comes from virtual goods sales: there are more than 2 million member-created items in IMVU’s virtual marketplace, including clothing, room decorations and music tracks. Rosenzweig also said the company should be profitable this year.

This news caps off a number of virtual-world related deals this month: Second Life developer Linden Lab just acquired two virtual goods trading sites, Donnerwood Media gobbled up mobile avatar service Pulse Entertainment, and there was a small investment in avatar-based profile service mEgo. Release.

PlaySpan has raised a total of $24 million in funding since its inception, and gobbled up alternative gaming payment firm PayByCash for an undisclosed amount in July. PayByCash helps bridge the gap between online worlds and real-world money largely through pre-paid gaming cards that are sold in locations like Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and 7-Eleven. There are a number of in-game and virtual-world commerce tech firms in the space, including LiveGamer, which recently upgraded its virtual trading platform and signed on a trio of new publishers. Release.