Revolutionary multi-screen advertising platform created by mobile marketing all-stars Gareth Davies, Nick Hynes, Sacha Carton and Tobin Ireland launches with backing from Notion Capital

LONDON – 9 AM BST, 16th July 2013 – Adbrain, a company building the advertising industry’s first transparent, real-time, multi-screen ad platform, has launched with $1.5 million in seed funding. Adbrain’s mission is to tear away the veil separating advertiser and audience, allowing brands to gain insight into how consumers engage across different devices. Users of the Adbrain platform will be able to quickly and efficiently create, manage and optimise campaigns in real time, delivering more targeted and meaningful messages to their customers as a result.

Adbrain is backed by some of the biggest and most experienced names in the mobile marketing industry including Nick Hynes (CEO and Co-Founder of Somo, the world’s largest independent mobile marketing agency), media and technology entrepreneur Sacha Carton (Ogmenta and Co-Founder of Ad Pepper Media), and Tobin Ireland (global board member of the Mobile Marketing Association and formally a senior executive at Vodafone, BSkyB and AOL).

Notion Capital, the entrepreneur-backed venture capital firm focused on businesses in the cloud computing and software-as-a-service sectors, led the funding round alongside Hynes, Carton and Ireland. Additional investors include Anil Hansjee (Google, IDG Ventures, Shazam and Lionhead) and serial tech investor Chris Mairs (Metaswitch Networks and investor in tech start-ups including ubiCabs).

Adbrain believes that current mobile advertising platforms are flawed, offering ‘black box’ services with little or no transparency, while broader, longstanding digital advertising platforms have failed to fulfil advertisers’ mobile and multi-screen needs. Adbrain will offer a real-time multi-screen advertising platform for agencies and brands looking to create, manage and optimise campaigns from a single, elegant, easy-to-use interface.

In a world of multiple connected devices, the Adbrain engine creates a single customer profile by modelling billions of rich desktop, mobile and tablet data sets using advanced data science and machine-learning algorithms. This unified multi-screen customer view enables advertisers to deliver more targeted and relevant advertising. The Adbrain platform will incorporate intelligent, data driven real-time bidding functionality, ensuring that advertisers reach their target audiences with relevant and compelling messaging at the most efficient price.

Adbrain’s CEO is Gareth Davies, formally of Google, Doubleclick and Somo. The mobile advertising functions of the Adbrain platform will be made available to users in Autumn 2013, while its multi-screen capabilities will come online in early 2014.

Gareth Davies, Co-Founder and CEO of Adbrain commented: “The mobile advertising ecosystem is dominated by an array of non-transparent solutions which provide little or no insight into consumer behaviour across devices, especially mobile. Campaigns are being rolled out blind and advertisers don’t know where or when their ads are being served, or to whom. So not only are conversations not being continued across devices but often brands are paying to acquire customers twice.”

“At Adbrain, we want to change this. Our mission is to help brands connect-the-screens so they can better understand their customers across all devices. We’re helping advertisers realise the link in behaviour between mobile and desktop technology so they can regain control and deploy more efficient, targeted campaigns that deliver more meaningful interactions with their customers.”

Jos White, Partner at Notion Capital, added: “The mobile advertising industry is set for explosive growth in the coming years as the market catches up with the levels of usage. But there is a distinct lack of innovation and transparency in the market. We think this is an opportunity that Adbrain can take full advantage of with a great team and a compelling vision based on big data across multiple devices.”

– ENDS –

Media contacts

Ivana Farthing

ivana.farthing@diffusionpr.com

+44(0)207 291 0246

Colin Myer

colin.myer@diffusionpr.com

+44(0)207 291 0242