Pixalate has raised $18.1 million growth capital to fund its fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform. It monitors mobile advertising and connected TV.
The latest round of funding saw Western Technology Investment and Javelin Venture Partners lead the effort. This brings Pixalates total funding up to $22.7 million. Jalal Nasir (founder and CEO of Pixalate) said that this includes a $4.6million Series A round in 2014.
With offices in London and Palo Alto, the company analyzes more than 5 million apps from five app stores, and more than 2 billion IP addresses across 300,000,000 connected TV devices. This allows it to report and detect fraudulent advertising activity on behalf of its customers. According to Nasir, there are more than 40 types of invalid traffic.
Nasir was raised going to livestock shows as a child with his grandfather. He learned how to spot defects in animals and has brought that insight to Pixalate. Pixalate can identify real and false content users and detect if fake ads are being hidden behind real advertising. This will zap smartphone batteries and siphon internet usage and even ad revenues.
Digital advertising is big business. According to Nasir, research by the Association of National Advertisers estimates that $200 billion in global digital advertising will be spent this year. This is an increase of $10 billion from the previous year. He also said that ad fraud is estimated to cost the industry $35 trillion.
According to Nasir, advertisers pay a premium in order to reach the right audience based on their consumption data. Unfortunately, the data could not be authorized or transmitted without consent.
Pixalates is not like other competitors who focus on first-party risk. The company instead takes a third-party approach due to the fact that people spend so much time on their phones. The company discovered that 16% of Apple's apps don't have privacy policies, while 22% of Google's apps store do. He said that advertisers are seeking more information because of increased privacy regulations and crime.
The company will use the new funding to add more privacy and data features, double its sales and customer team, expand its London office, and open a new Singapore office.
Since 2014, the company has grown 1,200% in its revenue and now collects over 2 Terabytes per month. Nasir plans to monitor some of the China-based apps, such as Tencent and Baidu.
Javelin Venture Partners managing director Noah Doyle is also closely monitoring the digital advertising industry. He said that every linkage point exposes an area in an app where bad actors could come in. This was not possible in the past and advertisers need to be able to protect it.
Doyle said that Jalal (Bandeali), and Amin(Bandeali), have a great insight into the fraud and created a unique solution to this problem. Their insight and vision to develop an analytical approach to capture every transaction in a series of transactions was impressive. This provides advertisers and marketers with comprehensive visibility that helps them maintain high quality advertising.
