Oddcast will use the extra $4 million to expand into the consumer and mobile markets, and to reinforce their position in the b2b market. “Oddcast pioneered many of the most creative uses of avatars on the web,” said Brad Burnham, managing director of Union Square Ventures in a statement. “They are innovators in viral marketing for major brand advertisers including ESPN, Bratz, and the recently successful Monk-e- Mail Career Builder campaign. We would not be surprised if one day soon, young people put the same energy into their avatars that they put into their social network profiles. We are thrilled to be working with the Oddcast team to make that possible”

If you were anywhere near a television during last year’s Super Bowl, there’s no doubt you would’ve caught a glimpse of one of CareerBuilder.com’s havoc-wreaking office monkeys. In fact, you probably noticed an odd familiarity to your own workplace colleagues and, no doubt, your boss. Well, according to a recent survey from CareerBuilder.com, you’re not alone. The survey found that fifty-three percent of workers say they feel like they work with a bunch of monkeys and one-in-five say they think their boss is a monkey.

Well, if you liked what you saw then on TV, you’ll really get a kick out of their latest viral campaign that uses Oddcast’s avatars to get the word out about using one of the most well-known job search companies to get hired. This latest addition to the “Working with Monkeys” campaign arrives just in time to tap into the same audience that went bananas over last year’s Super Bowl. CareerBuilder hopes this year’s spots during the biggest commercial holiday of the year will pay off for them once again.

CareerBuilder’s “working with monkeys” campaign was created by Chicago-based independent agency Cramer-Krasselt and has since scored among the Top Ads of 2005 as determined by USA Today’s end of year Ad Track Survey. In addition, one of the spots was selected as the funniest television commercial of the year in a TBS online poll. But to spread the word virally, last week Cramer-Krasselt tapped Oddcast to get those monkeys talking with their ever popular avatar technology.

“Appropriately branded ‘Monk-e-Mail’, the application allows users to choose their favorite chimp, dress her up, add voice and send to friends,” Adi Sideman, President and CEO of Oddcast tells ADOTAS. Sure enough, when you visit this interactive viral microsite you can choose between three work appropriately dressed chimps, then style it with anything from aviator sunglasses to a sandy beach backdrop to iPod earphones, give it a voice (either pre-recorded, text to speech, or record one by phone), and then just send it to your friends or colleagues.

As for how well it’s being received so far, Sideman tells us, “After just 7 days, it is slated to be one of our best deployments ever, with the national media picking up on the monkey excitement.” And CareerBuilder is soaking it all up to get ready for this year’s Super Bowl push.

As Richard Castellini, VP of Consumer Marketing at CareerBuilder said in a statement, “The Super Bowl in 2005 served as a fantastic platform for CareerBuilder.com to get our message out to the largest numbers of both job seekers and employers. With the subsequent dramatic jump in both job seeker site traffic and employer job postings, we were eager to secure a significant presence in the 2006 Super Bowl.”

CareerBuilder.com also plans to sign new marketing partnerships to power co-branded online job search centers such as those featured on America Online and MSN.

If you want to monkey around with Career Builder, check out the Monk-e-Mail viral microsite.