Mobile ad exchange Millennial Media failed to produce the Q4 it needed to shine a bright light on what proved to be a dismal year. 

The company had reported losses right up to the final quarter of 2014, where $86.4 million in revenue couldn’t prevent a $11.6 million loss overall – up from $3.7 million in 2013. 

A similar situation played out in Q2, where losses increased year on year from $3.1 million to $15.1 million, and in Q1, with a dip of $3.8 million rising to $12.9 million.

Q3 told a slightly story, as a loss of $109.4 million was reported following a $93.5 million impairment charge. 

The group’s cross-quarter performance resulted in earnings of $296.2 million for the full year 2014, down from $259.2 million in 2013.

Across the board 

Other notable take-aways from Millennial’s Q4 report showed gross margin dropping only slightly from a base point of 38.7% in Q4 2013 to 38.3%.  

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) showed a far greater amount of movement, declining from $7.6 million last year to a loss of $1.8 million. 

This caused another hammer blow to EBITDA for the year, which froze at a loss of $19.4 million following a $9.0 million gain in 2013. 

Despite this, Millennial holds a solid client base for its app monetisation services. The company is reaching over 650 million users per month through over 60,000 titles that use its tools to serve various forms of ads.  

Positive signs

In light of the readings being announced, Millennial Media CEO Michael Barrett pointed to the company beating analyst expectations of $73.27 million in Q4 revenue as evidence of his firm ending 2014 on a “high note”. 

He also cited the company’s recent purchase of mobile supply-side platform Nexage as a positive sign that Millennial is ready for what the future may hold.

“We successfully completed our acquisition of Nexage, added several key management personnel, and exceeded our fourth quarter revenue expectations,” said Barrett. 

“Through these accomplishments, we’ve entered 2015 with a stronger, more complete set of tools to help us execute on our full-stack marketplace vision and make mobile simple for our partners.”

After beating predictions for revenue, Millennial’s share price showed steady gains in after-hours trading on Monday. It had grown 0.05% to $1.59 at the time of publication.