AdTonos notes 10x annual growth and secures Seed investment led by BlackSheep Fund
The only independent full-stack digital audio advertising platform and one of the fastest-growing ad tech companies, AdTonos, has successfully closed its seed round.
AdTonos, which successfully monetises gaming, podcasts, audiobooks, music and radio streams for over 1000 recognised publishers across the UK, EU, LATAM and the US, has today announced that it has closed a seed funding round of 2 M$, which is slightly more than the company’s monthly sales, from BlackSheep Fund and ProtosNext, among other investors. This round of financing is a mid-step for planned Series A by late 2023, in which the company will rise to focus on the US expansion plan. Current company plans include further development of their platform including new products for podcast and mobile games monetisation. This is to be followed by a better presence in existing markets, and expansion into new geographic markets, including the US and more countries within the EU and APAC.
“The future of digital audio advertising is now,” says Michal Marcinik, CEO & Founder of AdTonos. “I am happy to welcome our new investors to such a successful business. I am very satisfied that they join the company that, thanks to the efforts of the entire team, achieved such tremendous growth organically as our preseed funding was spent years ago already. Thanks to our new investors’ brilliant network in Europe and the US, I am convinced that our experience in the advertising industry, combined with the qualifications of our team, will enable us to maintain our ambitious growth plan and repeat its success of 10x annual growth in the following years.”
According to Statista, digital audio ad spending is set to reach $6.78bn and an 8.09% annual growth rate (CAGR 2022-2027). This means that by 2027, digital audio advertising’s projected market volume will exceed $10.01bn. This shows how much development potential the digital audio ads market has and that AdTonos with its range of products has a chance to gain a significant share of these revenues.
“Mixing high competencies, new audio inventory enablement and innovative audio-focused solutions are what makes AdTonos unique. We are very proud to support AdTonos’ great team of Industry experts in their ambitious growth plan. Stay tuned for the next steps!” – said Giovanni Strocchi, Co-Founder & Senior Venture Partner, BlackSheep Fund.
“AdTonos is an innovative, well-designed solution for the promising market of digital audio advertising. Unique product and huge market potential combined with a motivated team that effectively implements their visions into reality is a perfect match. We are happy to support the team on its business journey and hope to achieve great results together.” – said Paweł Sikorski, Partner at ProtosNext.
AdTonos has already developed interactive voice capabilities for audio advertising, allowing listeners to interact in real-time with advertisers through YoursTruly™ on voice Assistant-enabled mobile devices and smart speakers. This highlights the vast potential of AdTonos’ technology to reach a global audience. Another essential product in the ad tech portfolio is Twilight, AdTonos’ technology solution for broadcasting and targeting ads in podcasts. To enable the broadcast of audio ads in mobile games, AdTonos developed Sandstorm SDK, offering mobile gaming publishers an unparalleled user experience of not interrupting gameplay.
About AdTonos
AdTonos is an audio advertising platform that connects advertisers with publishers. The marketplace offers multiple ad placements from well-known pre-rolls, through to mid-rolls and real-time ad replacement for live streaming. This provides advertisers with vast reach across digital audio channels, while radio stations, podcasters or music streaming services profit from the use of an effective tool that supports them in growing their revenues from online advertising.
AdTonos, as the first company in the world, has brought real-time interactivity to live radio with its YoursTruly™ technology created to deliver interactive audio ads. YoursTruly™ allows advertisers to dynamically insert interactive ads in live radio content and works: on all Echo devices or any smart speaker that has Alexa enabled, on all Google Home devices or any smart speaker that has Google Assistant-enabled, on 100% of Android and iOS mobile phones with Android and Google Assistant turned on, or an active Alexa App.
Brands have, at their fingertips, an easy-to-reach audience of more than 272 million unique online audio listeners from the UK and worldwide and the potential of at least 5 billion ad playouts a month. AdTonos is supported by the UK’s Department of International Trade, helping the company to scale globally, and is a member of IAB UK, IAB Europe and the European Association of Commercial Radios, which represents commercial radio at the European Parliament.
About BlackSheep
BlackSheep MadTech Fund is the first European vertical venture capital fund, managed by Eureka SGR, dedicated to investments in marketing and communication technologies, led by entrepreneurs and managers – Umberto Bottesini, Sandro Moretti, Marco Caradonna and Giovanni Strocchi – who have been protagonists of the digital transformation for over 20 years. More specifically BlackSheep invests in technology companies active in the fields of Big Data, Robotic Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence and related B2B applications for the marketing and advertising industry (MadTech).
About ProtosNext
ProtosNext is the next fund of two managing partners and investors that make up ProtosVC. In the area of VC and PE, the fund managed to complete dozens of exits to strategic investors and through the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
ProtosNext is a Venture Capital fund investing in technological projects at an early stage of development (early stage) operating in the Marketplace / LeadGenerator, SaaS models.
This article featured in Adweek.
