Media measurement company VideoAmp Inc. has raised $275 million in a series F round of funding as it pursues its efforts to take a slice of the media measurement business dominated by Nielsen, the company said.

The round, led by Spruce House Partnership, values VideoAmp at $1.4 billion, the company said. That is a significant increase since 2019 when it reached a $200 million valuation after raising $50 million from Raine Group LLC, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Investors in the latest round, which also include D1 Capital Partners LP, Tiger Global Management LLC, EPIQ Capital Group and Ankona Capital Partners, now collectively own about 17% of the company. That percentage could change if VideoAmp uses a portion of its new funds to repurchase shares from earlier investors, the company said.

VideoAmp helps advertisers target and measure the impact of their ads across platforms such as TV and mobile. The latest round is meant to help the company compress a three-year plan for growth into one year as it aims to serve more clients seeking non-Nielsen measurement tools, said the company’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ross McCray.

“The ecosystem is asking for alternative currencies,” he said, referring to metrics that advertisers and media sellers use to set performance goals and cinch ad deals.

VideoAmp historically sold its media planning and measurement software and tools to ad buyers. Now the company also wants to bolster its operations servicing the media side of the business. The company, which this year increased its headcount to nearly 300 people from about 175, wants to add hundreds of more employees across sales and engineering, among other roles, said Mr. McCray.

Nielsen Holdings PLC has been the dominant player in media measurement for the better part of a century. TV ad buyers and sellers rely on the company’s commercial ratings to set goals—reaching a certain number of 18-to-49-year-old men, for example—and close deals based on those targets.

But challenges with Nielsen’s traditional TV panel, including a pandemic-related undercounting of viewers, recently prompted the industry’s measurement watchdog to pull the company’s accreditation for its national TV ratings.

A number of media companies and ad buyers continue to work with Nielsen but have also been pushing for alternative measurement options, especially as TV networks invest in streaming, which allows for new ways to measure TV viewing.

ViacomCBS Inc. this month said it would work with VideoAmp as one option for advertisers to plan, measure and make deals on their campaigns, a departure for a large TV media business that typically relies on Nielsen.

“It was clear to us that the status quo of media measurement and currency is broken and needs to evolve given the size of the market and the technological capabilities available today,” said Ben Stein, managing partner of Spruce House.

VideoAmp said it also entered a financing agreement with Capital IP Investment Partners earlier this year for up to $75 million in debt.

-Republished from the Wall Street Journal

 

Amid strong revenue, paid subscriber and partner growth, Tile, the pioneer in finding technology, has raised $40 million of non-dilutive debt financing from Capital IP. The funding will drive continued investment in finding technologies that are built to work for everyone and everything. The news comes as Tile plans to unveil its latest slate of product and feature updates in October.

Tile has experienced strong growth this year. In the first half of 2021, revenue is up over 50 percent year-over-year. Tile also recently passed 40 million Tile devices sold, and has more than 425,000 paying subscribers as part of its Premium and Premium Protect programs. In addition, Tile is now embedded in over 40 different third-party devices and products as part of the Find With Tile program. Activations of Tile’s finding technology on these third party devices have increased over 200 percent in the first half of the year. New partnerships — like one with Google’s Fitbit to help users keep track of their fitness trackers — continue to expand the variety of devices powered by Tile’s finding technology, which now include everything from wireless earbuds and headphones to laptops to retainer cases to dog collars.

As the finding category continues to grow, Tile has leveraged its decade of experience to offer differentiated products and features. Tile’s devices are platform agnostic, working across Android and iOS, and with popular smart speakers like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Multiple form factors — like Slim for a wallet, Sticker for a remote or bike, and Pro and Mate, which attach to keys or bags right out of the box without requiring the purchase of additional accessories — mean there is a Tile for every use-case. And with a finding network that spans Android and iOS devices across 195 countries, Tile has an ever-growing community to help users find what matters most.

“Tile pioneered the finding category and is well positioned to continue leading it,” said Tile’s CEO CJ Prober. “As awareness of the category has grown, our strategy of building open, accessible technologies that can be used across platforms and use-cases, and embedded in third party products, has allowed us to post strong growth this year. This funding will help us further that momentum as we continue to build products and features that work for everyone and everything.”

“We are excited to partner with the Tile team as they continue to define and lead the finding category through hardware and software-based innovations,” said Capital IP’s Managing Partner Riyad Shahjahan. “The impressive revenue growth and fast-climbing subscriber trends underline the value proposition that Tile delivers in a platform-agnostic manner, and were a critical driver in our decision to invest. The Tile team has an ambitious roadmap ahead and we look forward to supporting their entry into new markets and applications to further cement their market leadership.”

About Tile

Locating millions of unique items every day, Tile gives everything the power of smart location. Leveraging its vast community that spans 195 countries, Tile’s cloud-based finding platform helps people find the things that matter to them most. In addition to devices in multiple form factors for every use case, Tile works with over 40 different third party devices, leveraging its finding technology across audio, travel, wearables and PC categories. Recently awarded #5 on Fast Company’s list of Most Innovative consumer electronics companies, Tile is based in San Mateo, CA and is backed by Francisco Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and GGV Capital. For more information, please visit Tile.com.

Issuu, the global leader in digital content publishing, today announced the company has secured a $31M million round of financing from Capital IP.

Issuu will use the capital to scale teams across the company, invest in new product expansion, and compound accelerating growth.

“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a significant upswing in both new customer acquisition and active use on Issuu,” said Joe Hyrkin, chief executive officer at Issuu. “While Issuu continues to be the leading platform for SMB content marketing, catalogues, brochures, menus, real estate guides, architecture portfolios, and publications across every digital channel, we’re also seeing a huge increase in the creator economy ecosystem.”

Continued Hyrkin, “Last year we saw 840% growth in digital sales thanks to independent creators using Issuu to sell their content across social media platforms. Across the board, hundreds of millions of businesses globally are embracing the necessity to distribute their content digitally and Issuu will be here to help them. Capital IP’s investment will provide valuable support to further expand Issuu’s leadership in this market.”

Capital IP Managing Partner Aron Dantzig said, “We are excited to partner with the Issuu team to further drive the company’s successful record in empowering content creators to seamlessly create, transform and distribute content. The Issuu business model has exhibited strong historical growth, which has been further accelerated by recent digital trends in content marketing. Our investment will help Issuu bolster the company’s industry leading technology platform and further enhance the value proposition for millions of Issuu’s publishers and readers, while allowing Issuu to build ever-closer integrations with leading content distributors.”

This new round is the first for Issuu since July 2014, when the company raised $10 million from Heartcore Capital and Japanese Telco, KDDI. Hyrkin is a well-known advocate for profitable growth, a business strategy known colloquially as ProGro. Hyrkin has spoken extensively on the topic and recently released an eBook to help startups who wish to learn about the ProGro path.

“Pro Gro is about delivering sustainable customer value. After 17 consecutive quarters of profitable growth, even in the midst of a global pandemic, we’re in a great position to raise capital from a creative and supportive firm like Capital IP. We see them as an important partner to help us fuel the expansion of our team, product, and vision.”

Last month, Issuu opened a new product development office in Braga, Portugal – a burgeoning tech and engineering hotspot. Hyrkin has also been filling out his executive roster, recruiting back former Issuu executive and Boston Consulting Group innovator Alexander Grosse as chief technology officer, and hiring Slack and Workday veteran April Sandoval as Head of Business Intelligence.

About Issuu

With over 30 million publications hosted and 4+ billion monthly page views, Issuu is the largest SaaS content publishing and marketing platform in the world. The Issuu Story Cloud empowers content creators to transform designs from static files into marketing assets for every distribution channel – including flipbooks to embed in websites and blogs, mobile-optimized articles, motion-graphic stories for social media, GIFs for email, and more. Founded in 2006, Issuu is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Copenhagen, Berlin, and Braga, Portugal. For more information, please visit Issuu.com.

Software and data platform, VideoAmp, has secured a total of $50M of non-dilutive debt financing from Capital IP with the ability to draw up to $25M in further capital. The funding will further accelerate VideoAmp’s leadership position in planning, measurement, optimization and currency solutions for the convergent TV ecosystem. As the consumer video viewership landscape continues to fragment and the need for an infrastructure that unifies linear TV, streaming and digital media audiences intensifies, VideoAmp is positioned as the solution for advertisers, agencies and media owners, redefining how media is valued, bought and sold.

VideoAmp has seen over 700% growth over the last five years and is on track to approximately double year-over-year growth in 2021. The round will be used to continue hiring best in class executives and massively expand sales, client success and engineering teams. Most recently, VideoAmp brought on Paul Ross, former Trade Desk CFO, as their Chief Financial Officer and newest board member.

Co-Founder and CEO, Ross McCray, stated: “Our execution and strong financial performance have allowed VideoAmp optionality on funding our growth plans. We are happy to partner with Capital IP for the access to growth capital in order to fully capture our land grab opportunity on great terms and without shareholder dilution. It is the best of both worlds.”

The latest round of funding indicates a new phase of growth for VideoAmp as it seizes the opportunity to create measurement, currency and optimization solutions for the $160B convergent TV ecosystem. As an alternative solution to the legacy model of television measurement, VideoAmp is further investing in their proprietary dataset that commingles ACR and Set-Top Box data across 28M households and integrates into multiple digital data sources using first-to-market privacy-safe methodologies like clean rooms. The use of clean rooms allows VideoAmp to accurately measure media on an impression level, with technological guarantees, while adhering to privacy guidelines and state laws. VideoAmp’s data, combined with a comprehensive toolset for planning, measurement, optimization and attribution, are all housed within the VideoAmp platform and provide a deduplicated view of advertising performance across linear, streaming and digital. The suite of tools and data enables marketers and media owners to reimagine the way brand marketing and media is valued, bought and sold.

Aron Dantzig and Riyad Shahjahan, both Partners at Capital IP, jointly stated: “Ross and the team at VideoAmp have built one of the most technologically advanced and effective platforms to measure and optimize linear TV, streaming and digital advertising in the world. We are thrilled to partner with the company going forward as they continue to redefine the cross-channel video advertising industry with innovative, privacy-compliant platforms that deliver critical insights to media owners, advertisers and agencies alike when legacy systems fail to support.”

Momentum for the company shows no sign of slowing as a slew of key partnerships were announced through the early months of 2021. Supply-side platform OpenAP and media giant Omnicom Media Group announced VideoAmp as the first partner to integrate with their platform in a first-to-market partnership. NBCUniversal also called upon VideoAmp as the first measurement partner to integrate with their newly formed Audience Insights Hub. Most recently, dentsu named VideoAmp as its data partner of choice for its newly formed DELTA team with the goal of revolutionizing the way media investments are planned, bought and measured.

About VideoAmp

VideoAmp is a software and data company creating a convergent TV ecosystem by connecting the disparate systems across traditional TV, streaming and digital media. Siloed views into these systems are responsible for wasted advertising dollars, a decrease in publisher revenue opportunities and consumers being stuck with overly repetitive ads.

The VideoAmp platform and its suite of tools, creates a unified, privacy-first view of the audience that powers a more effective value exchange for the entire advertising industry. This value exchange enables an alternative media currency, which redefines how media is valued, bought and sold. Advertisers use VideoAmp’s technology to increase their return on investment with holistic data-driven planning, measurement, and optimization, while empowering publishers to effectively monetize audiences across their entire portfolio of assets. To learn more, visit us at videoamp.com.

Percolate, the premier enterprise content marketing platform, today announced that it has secured $32 million in financing from existing investors including GGV Capital, Sequoia, and Lightspeed, and new investor Capital IP Investment Partners (“CapIP”). The funds will be used to accelerate Percolate’s leadership position in the content marketing category and invest in the next wave of marketing technology innovation.

Since 2011, the company has built systems that help enterprises organize, plan and execute marketing campaigns — unlocking the potential of marketing organizations. This added support will be key in meeting the growing needs of enterprise customers by adding high-value capabilities that expand the reach of the Percolate platform and critical integrations with other leading marketing technologies in the ecosystem.

“Percolate has been steadfast in its mission to redefine the content marketing platform category. Its rapid growth, long list of customers, strong retention metrics, analyst recognition, and highly experienced management team made a compelling case for us to invest now,” stated Riyad Shahjahan and Aron Dantzig, both Partners at CapIP. “We are excited to partner with Percolate to help accelerate their next phase of growth.”

Jeff Richards, Managing Partner of GGV Capital, an early investor in Percolate said, “This sizeable investment is a strong validation of Percolate’s blue-chip customer base of global brands as well as Randy’s leadership over the last year and the opportunity ahead for Percolate.”

Since 2018, when Randy Wootton took over as CEO, the company has experienced rapid growth, including 53 percent year over year ARR. Wootton brings with him two decades of experience scaling marketing and technology platforms around the world. The team was recently bolstered by the addition of Steve Shevick, a seasoned Silicon Valley CFO, to help scale the company in anticipation of continued growth and to take Percolate to the next level.

“At a time when our customers are facing an explosion of channels, markets, and devices—often with limited budgets — we provide the tools that help them get the most out of their content and expand the capabilities of their teams,” said Wootton. “We are delighted to add CapIP to our list of talented and supportive investors. This financing demonstrates the exciting traction we are gaining and the opportunity that lies ahead.”

About Percolate

Percolate is the leading Content Marketing Platform for the enterprise. Percolate offers solutions to introduce visibility into the marketing process, improve coordination of work, and effectively build marketing campaigns and content. The world’s largest brands — including Mastercard, Cisco, Electronic Arts, and Bosch — use Percolate to create a coordinated customer experience, reduce production costs, and understand marketing impact.

Capital IP Investment Partners (“Capital IP”) announced today that it has completed a structured debt investment in GuideSpark, Inc. (“GuideSpark”), the leader in employee communication. The financing will be used to advance GuideSpark’s continued growth as the SaaS company scales its market-leading Communicate Cloud software. GuideSpark is headquartered in Redwood City, California.

“This investment helps GuideSpark sustain our momentum and scale our employee communication solutions to meet the growing need of enterprise customers looking to better connect and communicate with their employees,” GuideSpark CEO Keith Kitani said. “GuideSpark’s unique blend of content, software and campaign technology enables 600 customers to inspire, inform and activate their employees, leading to greater adoption of HR programs.”

GuideSpark recently expanded its Communicate Cloud capabilities to address a broad set of mission-critical HR initiatives including benefits, total rewards, talent, and culture – driving employee engagement around important topics and strengthening their connection to company value.

“Capital IP is delighted to partner with the GuideSpark team at this important phase of their growth as they launch the Communicate Cloud product to transform employee engagement and communication,” said Riyad Shahjahan, Partner at Capital IP. “GuideSpark’s diverse customer base uses its software and content to run focused HR campaigns that result in improved retention, engagement and performance. The company’s deep enterprise customer relationships, demonstrated value proposition, and a market-leading technology platform were crucial factors in motivating us to partner with GuideSpark.”

“GuideSpark is an excellent example of Capital IP’s dedicated focus to provide unique, flexible, minimally dilutive structured-credit solutions for emerging businesses with strong revenues and established market penetration,” added Aron Dantzig, Partner at Capital IP. “Capital IP looks forward to further utilizing our industry expertise to be a value-add partner for growth businesses whose innovative products and services deliver value to both customers and investors alike.”

About GuideSpark:

GuideSpark is the leader in employee communication with 600 enterprise customers, who use its software and solutions to effectively engage over 22 million employees and achieve HR program adoption goals. GuideSpark is the only company that blends software and content experiences to deliver communication campaigns that inspire, inform and activate employees. The result is measurable employee engagement and greater connection to the employer value proposition. To learn how you can transform your employee communications, visit http://www.guidespark.com.

Capital IP Investment Partners (“Capital IP”) announced today that it has completed a $22 million structured debt investment in Questback AS (“Questback”). Questback, headquartered in Oslo, Norway, is Europe’s leading supplier of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for Enterprise Feedback, Employee Engagement and Customer Experience. The financing will be used to advance Questback’s further growth in the enterprise markets of the U.S., U.K. and Central Europe as well as to broaden its enterprise product offering.

“We have an extremely strong footprint in Europe, and we are now expanding aggressively in North America with our market-leading offering. We will expand our go-to-market organization in the U.S., UK and Central Europe and also further strengthen our technology platform. We continue to see that digitalization, innovation and hyper-competition are disrupting our customers’ business and driving increased demand for feedback” said Frank Møllerop, CEO of Questback.

“The Questback team has successfully built a strong and diversified feedback business that has been deployed by over 5,000 companies and a third of the Forbes 100.  We are delighted to partner with Frank and his team to help accelerate the next phase of the company’s growth. The combination of Questback’s unique presence across Europe, leading multi-tenant SaaS platform, long-term relationships with global customers and partners, and highly experienced management team was a compelling thesis for Capital IP,” said Riyad Shahjahan, Partner at Capital IP.

About Questback:

Questback is a global leader in enterprise feedback management with more than 5,000 customers world-wide using its solutions for gathering, analysing and acting on business-critical information. Questback’s customers improve their top-line and organizational efficiency by improving the customer and employee experience. Like Questback, its customers believe that people and businesses need feedback to learn and grow, and Questback’s technology allows companies to capture this wisdom from customers, employees and the markets. Please see www.questback.com for more information.

GigOptix, Inc., a leading supplier of advanced semiconductor communications components for use in Cloud connectivity, data centers, and high-speed optical and wireless networks, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Magnum Semiconductor, Inc., a privately-held Milpitas, California-based provider of silicon ICs, SoCs, software, and IP for the professional video broadcast and IoT camera markets, in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $55 million net based upon the average closing price of GigOptix stock for the trailing thirty day period ended April 1, 2016. The acquisition is expected to become effective tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5, 2016, and upon the close, GigOptix, Inc. will be renamed GigPeak, Inc., beginning to operate under that name as of Wednesday, April 6, 2016.

“We have a long and proven track record of acquiring and integrating cutting edge technology companies in the most financially prudent manner. The acquisition of Magnum Semiconductor, our eighth acquisition since inception, is another important step in realizing our initial 2007 roadmap vision and strategic plan to expand GigOptix through inorganic and organic growth. With the addition of Magnum Semiconductor, we have taken a meaningful step in expanding our product portfolio to further enhance our mission of enabling high-speed and high-quality information streaming end-to-end over the network, from the core to the consumer,” said Dr. Avi Katz, GigOptix’s Founder, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer. “We look forward to supporting Magnum’s continuing efforts as part of the newly rebranded GigPeak family to drive innovation through their proven and market accepted software-based solutions to deliver best-in-class video and data to the world’s leading broadcasting and IoT camera OEMs and customers. The exponential growth in video traffic will further expand the demand for GigOptix’s and Magnum’s solutions in real-time high-speed and high-quality information streaming, video compression in the cable, satellite, telco/IPTV and mobile/over the top (OTT) markets. The increasing need for powerful video analytics capabilities has also been driving significant interest in Magnum’s solutions in the IoT camera markets by major OEMs. We are impressed by Magnum’s technology, customers, growth profile, and the technical depth and experience of its engineering team. We are very excited by the many opportunities this combination offers that will enable us to expand our focus from the enterprise networking and cloud connectivity to broadcasting head-ends, IoT, and consumer markets. I also want to personally offer a warm welcome to the entire Magnum team that is joining our family today.”

Gopal Solanki, Chief Executive Officer and President of Magnum Semiconductor stated, “The combination of GigOptix’s leading edge wired and wireless high-speed communication technology, combined with Magnum’s professional quality video compression and SoC hardware and software expertise creates a unique and powerful platform for streaming video. The Magnum team is excited to join forces to develop solutions for a future where video presence is pervasive and widely deployed at both the consumer and commercial premises.”

“We have researched the market for a long time to identify the best-in-class video broadcasting, compression and analytics technology company that will allow us to complement our leading edge high-speed connectivity product portfolio for the telecom and datacom enterprise networking. This combination of products and technologies enable us to address both the speed of data transmission and the amount of bandwidth the data consumes within a network, driven in particular by video, which is a major source of data center traffic. We are poised to provide powerful solutions to enhance the footprint utilization and reduce total cost of ownership of existing network pipes from the core to the end user. GigPeak’s broad portfolio of cutting-edge products will serve the enterprise networking and broadcasting OEMs, as well as the IoT and consumer markets,” said Dr. Raluca Dinu, GigOptix’s Executive Vice President of Global Customer Operations.

Magnum Semiconductor is a leading provider of silicon ICs, SoCs, software and IP for the professional video broadcast and IoT camera markets. Magnum provides top of the line products, tools and technologies for the entire video content creation and distribution chain, from contribution and production through distribution over cable, satellite and IPTV to OTT video streaming. Magnum Semiconductor is headquartered in Milpitas, California, with sales and engineering offices in Canada, China, and Korea.

 

Capital IP Investment Partners, LLC (“Capital IP” or “CapIP”), an investment firm focused on structured investment opportunities in the life sciences and technology sectors, announced today that it has closed its inaugural $100 million investment vehicle with the backing of a leading institutional partner.

CapIP is focused on providing flexible capital solutions to a broad spectrum of companies spanning biopharma, medical devices, medical tools and diagnostics, and IT software, services and hardware. Capital IP seeks to create highly customized investment structures that offer fast-growing companies greater flexibility than traditional sources of growth capital with minimal equity dilution. These structured investments also offer Capital IP’s investors reduced downside, multiple sources of investment return, and limited correlation to other asset classes.

Capital IP has completed several transactions since the firm’s launch and are actively seeking and evaluating additional investment opportunities across a rapidly expanding opportunity pipeline.  The firm’s senior partners previously invested over $1.2 billion in a variety of structured credit facilities, royalty monetizations, and the acquisition of “legacy” assets at their prior firms.

“We are excited to have formalized a committed line of capital with one of our limited partners, who has been a long-time supporter and participant in our investments” said  Aron Dantzig, the firm’s founder and a Managing Partner. “We believe that our innovative approach to providing growth capital to emerging companies offers a real alternative in today’s volatile capital markets.

“Access to cost-efficient capital continues to pose a challenge for many emerging-growth companies, especially those with a deep base of underlying assets and misunderstood inherent value,” added Managing Partner Riyad Shahjahan. “We are seeing strong demand for our type of non-traditional, minimally dilutive capital in both the technology and life sciences sectors.”