There is a gap in the market for advertising solutions that can work well without relying on cookieFunctionality as a result of regulation, platform dynamics and consumer choice eating into the adtech stalwart known as cookies. A Spanish adtech that is doing just this has raised a large amount of money to double down on the opportunity.
Seedtag, a contextual advertising startup that uses artificial intelligence to read content on a page to match advertisers' aims, has raised more than $252 million. The money is coming in the form of an equity investment from a single investor, Advent International, and it will be used to expand the company into the U.S.
As part of the investment in Seedtag, Albert Nieto will be moving to the US to help grow the business there.
The partners said they were excited about the partnership with Advent. The investment will help accelerate our US expansion, boost our growth and reinforce our team. Our mission is to build the global leading platform for contextual advertising, offering an effective solution for cookieless advertising on the open web.
This investment is a significant step up for the company. In the last eight years, Seedtag has only raised $46 million, with previous investors including Intelectium Business, All Iron Venture and Adara Venture. The two co- founders are remaining shareholders with the round. A number of big-name clients have been picked up by it, including the likes of Levis.
The nature of how they connect with consumers, raise awareness among them and even deliver their products have all been drastically changing in the last several years, pushed along by a massive swing towards digital screen usage, changing data protection and privacy priorities, and advances in technology. Their understanding of how they can and should use digital platforms has changed, too, as they get their heads around the move away from static, analogue campaigns for marketing.
The cookie, the unit that had been built to track what users are doing online that could in turn be used to present more relevant information to them, has fallen afoul of privacy and security experts. They are getting phased out of use.
Seedtag is part of a wave of tech companies building what they like to describe as "privacy first" alternatives in advertising, typically solutions that continue to allow companies to serve ads in relevant places on programmatic platforms, but without collecting the kind of data that previously would have been required to do so
Seedtag has built a technology called LIZ, which uses artificial intelligence to read what is on a page or within a site, instead of what a user does.
Seedtag tracks the effectiveness of ads after they have been seen, but it is not clear how that is done. When I hear back on this point, I will update as and when I see fit.
As cookies become more problematic and less effective, it will push more attention to a wider set of tools, and companies building them. The two co-founders have a unique position in being able to answer the big questions about what is lacking in the market today, and how to address that, because they both worked at the same company at the same time.
Seedtag is a leading player in Europe and Latin America in contextual advertising. As they continue to build on this momentum, we are delighted to partner with them. Advent and the Seedtag management team will work together to expand the business internationally. We are looking forward to supporting the business to grow and scale up and to take it to the next level.
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