VideoAmp Secures $21.4 Million in Series B Growth Round

Funding will further fuel rapid growth and leading position in the convergence of linear TV and digital video


SANTA MONICA, CA--(Marketwired - August 31, 2017) - VideoAmp, the integrated TV operating system for advertising, today announced it has raised $21.4 million in a Series B funding round led by Mediaocean, with additional investment from European leader in broadcast, content, digital, RTL Group, GoAhead Ventures, StartUp Capital Ventures, Anthem Venture Partners, Wavemaker Partners & Simon Equity Partners. This round brings the total funds raised by the company to $36.6 million.

While focusing on product rollout over the last 18 months, VideoAmp achieved approximately 400% revenue growth from 2015 to 2016 and is already pacing at nearly 500% revenue growth from H1 2016 to H1 2017. The company scaled its TV OS for advertising to agency holding companies and content owners to unify the planning, packaging and activation of linear TV and digital video campaigns across screens. The four drivers of their growth were using digital audiences (or "Advanced Currencies") to plan linear TV, allocate upfront linear TV units, programmatically buying media across linear TV/OTT/digital channels, and reporting on de-duplicated reach and frequency within a single fully self-serve interface.

"VideoAmp has been 100 percent focused on solving the challenges of linear TV and digital video convergence since the day we founded the business in 2014," said Ross McCray, Co-Founder & CEO, VideoAmp. "I believe our singular focus and engineering first approach has been instrumental to our growth and a key advantage in the marketplace. Two-thirds of our employees are technical and we don't have the legacy business models that hinder and distract like our competitors. We will be investing the lion's share of capital from this round to further expand our engineering team and license additional first party data sets as new inputs into our data science projects."

In May 2017, VideoAmp and Mediaocean (a Vista Equity Partners portfolio company), announced a first-of-its-kind partnership that creates a fully integrated linear TV planning, allocation and optimization solution for the upfront and scatter markets for agencies and brands by VideoAmp integrating into a read/write API within Mediaocean's Spectra product. This groundbreaking integration improved the methods available to optimize committed network television buys, which are often the most strategic portion of a brand's budget.

"Our investment in VideoAmp is incredibly strategic," said Bill Wise, Co-Founder & CEO of Mediaocean. "Mediaocean has been the preeminent technology behind television advertising for five decades. However, media convergence and shifting consumer habits are changing the advertising landscape. This investment, and the software solutions we create together, will ensure that our customers benefit from secular shifts in advertising from traditional ad sales to programmatic and to audience-based buying and selling across devices. Mediaocean plans on being the preeminent technology for another five decades and beyond – and our investment in VideoAmp is an important chess move for us."

In conjunction with the investment from Mediaocean, Mr. Wise join's VideoAmp's Board of Directors to provide the company with mentorship and strategic guidance.

"Within our 'Total Video' strategy VideoAmp's plays a crucial role to analyze, execute and optimize ad campaigns for all screens in the most effective way for the advertiser. The team has built a truly unique TV and video advertising technology platform," noted Rhys Nolke, SVP Strategy of RTL and VideoAmp board member. "We view VideoAmp as the platform of choice for planning, buying, packaging and measuring cross-device video campaigns amidst an ever-evolving and extremely fragmented media landscape."

Through its world-class software, VideoAmp is bringing efficiencies into an inefficient market. The company is changing the way advertisers and content owners plan, buy, package and measure the success of all video advertising investment, regardless of where or how it's displayed on screen, including de-duplicating and targeting methods that reach broadcast TV, VOD, OTT, desktop, and mobile audiences. Over the last year, VideoAmp structured over 41 strategic partnerships in the space, including Mediaocean, comScore, Nielsen, Comcast's FreeWheel, Publicis Groupe's Mediavest|Spark, Omnicom Group, Horizon Media, LiveRamp, Neustar, SpotX, Clypd and many others.

ABOUT VIDEOAMP

VideoAmp is the world's first integrated TV operating system for the convergence of the linear TV and digital video advertising ecosystems. Our software and data solution enables advertisers to plan, buy, and measure the success of de-duplicated and precisely targeted campaigns that reach linear TV, VOD, OTT, and digital audiences. The linear suite allows for the first time the ability to use digital data for the planning and allocation of upfront TV commitments within existing workflows. This extends to scatter and cross screen initiatives, all within the VideoAmp fully self-serve operating system for buyers and sellers. VideoAmp is backed by Mediaocean, RTL Group, and six other top venture capital firms. For more information, visit www.videoamp.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

ABOUT MEDIAOCEAN

Mediaocean is the world's leading media software company that automates every aspect of the advertising workflow - from planning, buying and selling, to analyzing and optimizing, to invoicing and payments. Mediaocean's open cross-media platforms power $140 billion in global media budgets, and have unmatched reach and bridge traditional and digital media. Mediaocean serves more than 80,000 users across agencies, advertisers, broadcasters and publishers worldwide. The company employs 900 people worldwide and is part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio of software companies. Mediaocean is headquartered in New York with ten offices worldwide. Learn more at mediaocean.com, or connect with Mediaocean on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

ABOUT RTL GROUP

RTL Group is a leader across broadcast, content and digital, with interests in 56 television channels and 31 radio stations, content production throughout the world and rapidly growing digital video businesses. The television portfolio of Europe's largest broadcaster includes RTL Television in Germany, M6 in France, the RTL channels in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Croatia, Hungary and Antena 3 in Spain. RTL Group's families of TV channels are either the number one or number two in eight European countries. The Group's flagship radio station is RTL in France, and it also owns or has interests in other stations in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Luxembourg. RTL Group's content production arm, FremantleMedia, is one of the largest international creators, producers and distributors of multi-genre content outside the US. With operations in 31 countries, FremantleMedia's comprehensive global network is responsible for approximately 12,000 hours of programming a year and distributes over 20,000 hours of content worldwide. Combining the catch-up TV services of its broadcasters, the multi-platform networks BroadbandTV, StyleHaul and Divimove as well as FremantleMedia's more than 280 YouTube channels, RTL Group has become the leading European media company in online video. RTL Group also owns the advanced video ad serving platform SpotX. For more information, please visit RTLGroup.com and follow RTL Group on Twitter @rtlgroup. RTL Group – Entertain. Inform. Engage.

Contact Information:

Media Contact
Mike Sanchez
Wise Public Relations for VideoAmp
415-851-0132
videoamp@wisepublicrelations.com