Confiant, a New York-based company that protects the reputation and revenue of digital publishers with anti-malware that stays ahead of malicious actors, announced it has raised $4.1 million in Series A funding led by River Bay Investments and Rubicon Venture Capital.
With this funding round, Confiant is going to support investments in product innovation and hire top talent. And the company is planning to double its headcount in 2019 as it deepens its unique position to solve the problem holistically for the entire ecosystem.
River Bay Investments CEO Tom Leonard is joining Confiant co-founders Louis-David Mangin and Jerome Dangu on the Board of Directors at the company.
“Confiant is the first mover in delivering real-time protection from criminals intent on hijacking digital advertising,” said Mangin in a statement. “As the innovator in protecting publishers and platforms from malvertising, we’ll use this funding to redouble our efforts at delivering the best protection to the industry in the face of the ever-evolving threat of malvertising.”
Founded in 2013, Confiant built a real-time anti-malware software that prevents attacks on desktop, mobile, and video ads. And this technology safeguards billions of programmatic impressions in 2018. Plus Confiant has a unique visibility into the threat and attack landscape.
“For far too long, malware has been a costly plague for the digital ad industry, and malvertising groups are becoming bolder and more sophisticated in their attacks,” added Beeswax co-founder and CEO Ari Paparo and an advisor and customer of Confiant. “Confiant is the first company to address this issue holistically and make media safe for publishers and consumers, and they have the hacker DNA to beat the bad guys.”
Last year, Confiant released its 2018 Demand Quality Report — which found that upwards of 500 billion malicious and fraudulent impressions were served during 2018. This means it was one out of every 60 programmatic impressions. And so Confiant works with top publishers and platforms such as Tribune Media, Internet Brands, Vice Media, and Topix to prevent these types of attacks.
