Contextual advertising platform Mediabong books $5 million in funding for U.S. expansion
New York, NY(18 May 2015)
Mediabong, a European network for contextual video advertising solutions, today announced it has accepted $5m in Series B funding in order to expand to the United States. Entrepreneur Venture and Conegliano Venture, two European funds who both have active businesses in the US, led the investment round.
The investment will enhance Mediabong’s growth into the US market and accelerate the launch of its new-patented technology, the SyncRoll.
According to Laurent Bury, founder and CEO of Mediabong, “There are two issues that we are trying to address here: providing a non-intrusive video ad format to publishers; and, at the same time, maximizing the viewability for the advertiser. In order to achieve this, we must engage with the user, understand their behavior and in turn target the correct advertisement to them in a seamless fashion. Executing both ensures a win-win and drives better performance and, ultimately, more revenue for everybody.”
Bertrand Fiolet, Manager partner at Entrepreneur Venture said, “Mediabong’s team has developed a large premium network which generates great performance metrics for both its publishers and advertisers. We are delighted to help spearhead its expansion plans into the bigger media markets and look forward to continued success with them.”
Based on its R&D lab “the MB-Lab” Mediabong has developed algorithms based on user psychology, semantic profiling and performance. “Our partners consist of high profile publishers that generate hundreds of stories each day. As such, we have been able to study the way people interact with this type of content, what engages them, when they select an option and other habits. All of this combined led us to create the SyncRoll.”
A new video ad format
The company’s patented SyncRoll, a first-of-its-kind out-stream solution for publishers, directly confronts the video advertising offerings of Facebook and Google. With SyncRoll, advertisers can place a video ad in-line—in the middle of a story—when the user scrolls further down the frame, jumps to the end and picks up where it left off, with no latency. Mediabong’s Floating Ad Unit takes this a step further by keeping the ad unit in the frame as the user scrolls down. This solution dramatically improves viewability rates and attention rates, two video metrics that advertisers prioritize highly. In a recent survey, Kellogg’s reported a 40 percent increase in viewability led to a 75 percent increase in sales.
Brands need “PayForReal”
“This solution allows us to guarantee high viewability rates and strong view through rate (VTR) performances across our product set. When we don’t achieve the metrics that are set out by our advertisers, we simply do not charge them,” added Priyesh Patel, COO of Mediabong. “We call this model “PayForReal”. The first campaign that employed this solution generated an average VTR of 85% with a click through rate of 7percent.”
The company works with news organizations like Newsweek, CBS, Reuters, AFP, and the Associated Press and brands like Land Rover, L’Oreal, and Unilever.
“Publishers that take pride in the quality of their content should look to fully monetize their context. Mediabong offers this capability, which is why I am extraordinarily optimistic about its potential in the highly competitive U.S. media market,” added Laurent Bury.
About Mediabong
Founded in 2011, headquartered in Paris with an office in New York, Mediabong became the biggest video syndicator in France through its unique approach to syndicating video.