Menlo is a new backer of the firm, and partner Mark Siegel will now take a seat on the eXelate board of directors.

Siegel will be sitting alongside Shlomo Dovrat, general partner of Carmel, who’s company led eXelate’s first round on funding, which raised $4m.

EXelate CEO Meir Zohar said: “We’re thrilled to have the renewed support of Carmel Ventures and are excited about our new partnership with Menlo Ventures, which now provides us with deep strategic and financial roots in both Silicon Valley and the ‘far east coast’.”

The funding comes as US lawmakers attempt to hand greater control to consumers over how their personal information and online behaviour data is used to target advertising at them.

Senator John Kerry has pledged to pursue legislation, while privacy bills are already being considered by the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission said recently it was still considering the possibility of implementing some form of do-not-track list to provide consumers with a universal opt-out for tracking relating to targeted advertising.

EXelate, for its part, says that through its association with groups such as the Network Advertising Initiative and proprietary consumer privacy tools such as the Preference Manager, the company has been “a leader in empowering consumers to have a better understanding of how targeted online advertising works and in providing greater transparency and control over the process”.

In March this year it announced a deal with Nielsen to roll three of the consumer research firms household segmentation systems into its data offering.