Photo: VideoAmp
Santa Monica, California-based cross-platform advertising optimization company VideoAmp announced it has raised $70 million in a new round of funding led by investment bank The Raine Group. Including this round, VideoAmp has raised $106.6 million total.
In this round, the Raine Group invested $50 million and venture capital firm Ankona Capital contributed $20 million. Some of VideoAmp’s previous investors included Mediaocean and RTL Group.
VideoAmp is going to use the funding round to build out its enterprise sales and data science teams. Right now, VideoAmp has 150 employees and the company is planning to expand its headcount by about one-third to 200 staff members by early 2020 as revealed by chief strategy officer Jay Prasad via Variety.
Plus VideoAmp is going to look into some potential acquisitions just like how they acquired TV data processing company IronGrid last year. And the funding is going to help VideoAmp strengthen its position as an independent company in the ad ecosystem — one that can bring together the buy side, sell side, and data side together without any conflicts of interest.
Peter Liguori (former Tribune Media CEO and head of FX/Fox Entertainment) is going to join the company’s board and serve as a senior adviser. Plus Raine Group managing director Erik Hodge is also joining the board.
VideoAmp was founded by CTO Dave Gullo and CEO Ross McCray in 2014. And some of VideoAmp’s customers and partners include WPP’s GroupM, Omnicom, CBS, A+E Networks, AMC Networks, and Tubi.
“By optimizing marketing investment to sales versus eyeballs, everyone wins,” said McCray in a statement. “We are thrilled to complete this round of financing and to have the Raine Group and Ankona Capital as partners, which will allow us to rapidly expand our footprint as the leading independent platform that the industry needs right now.”
VideoAmp optimizes more than $10 billion a year of marketing spend. And the company provides a view into ad performance across TV and digital video platforms through its proprietary software. Then it recommends an optimal return on investment. Plus its system is able to match a marketer’s first-party sales data with ad-impression data from multiple pay-TV providers, smart TV makers, OTT services, mobile apps, and content providers.
“The current media environment has created an ever-increasing appetite among marketers and media owners for innovative video data and measurement solutions,” added Hodge. “Of the emerging companies in the space, VideoAmp stands out for its product and technology team – led by an extremely talented and dedicated entrepreneur, Ross McCray.”
In the past two years, VideoAmp has seen its revenue grow about eightfold. However, the company is not yet profitable on a P&L basis. Prasad told Variety that VideoAmp has had EBITDA positive results, but the company is going to invest heavily in people.
