NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–VidMob, the leading platform for Intelligent Creative, announced today that it has closed its Series C financing, raising $50 million in expansion capital from a group of funds, strategic investors, and influential companies in the creative technology space. The new round will support VidMob’s global expansion, new e-commerce initiatives, ongoing investments into advanced technology, and data science to help marketers maximize the value of advertising creative.
The new round includes participation from Adobe, the global leader in digital creativity software, Shutterstock, a leading global creative platform offering full-service solutions, high-quality content, and tools for brands, businesses and media companies, Drive by DraftKings, a venture capital firm investing in sports tech and entertainment, the Spruce House Partnership, Prefix Capital, BuildGroup, Interlock Partners, Macanta, and key industry and tech leaders like Michael Kassan, Nick Brien, and Thomas Tull, among others. Cesar Melo, former president at Mondelez and PepsiCo, CEO at Foster Grant and VP at Colgate-Palmolive is also investing and joining the board as an advisor. When combined with previous rounds, the company has now raised nearly $100 million to expand on its groundbreaking platform for Intelligent Creative.
VidMob has pioneered AI to measure creative performance so marketers can optimize ad design for more efficient and impactful campaigns. VidMob’s Intelligent Creative platform unifies creative and data and connects brands to a global network of elite content creators trained on continuously updated best practices for every digital media channel and next-gen ad format. Originally focused on partnerships with the major social platforms, VidMob has expanded its distribution to include leaders in the programmatic web and CTV / OTT.
“Every other area of enterprise operations has been positively impacted by software platforms — increasing efficiency and using data to bring intelligence to decision-making,” said Alex Collmer, the founder and CEO of VidMob. “This financing and these new relationships will be a powerful accelerant in our commitment to build and deploy a platform that helps marketers transform for the needs of the future, while respecting the irreplaceable role of human creativity and never losing sight of our mission to evolve creativity for the better.”
“We were blown away by the power of VidMob’s learning models for Intelligent Creative,” said Owen Van Natta of Prefix Capital, and former VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon. “VidMob’s ‘services-in-the-loop’ model, coupled with the integration of their creative marketplace is a construct that is unrivaled in its learning capability.”
“Creative performance has gone unmeasured while the advertising industry has focused on technologies to measure return on media spend, said Lynda Clarizio, former President of Nielsen US Media and an investor in the financing. “VidMob’s platform for Intelligent Creative solves this long unmet need by offering marketers a scalable platform across media to measure the impact of creative on achieving campaign objectives and to optimize and improve the creative process.”
Former Executive Vice-Chairman of Omnicom Media Group, and previously global CEO of OMD, Aegis Media and MEC, Mainardo de Nardis, who also invested in the financing, added, “I was privileged to be part of a group of people who transformed the full-service advertising model, separating media from creative, at a time when advertisers demanded independent strategic media services. That was 30 years ago. Today, I am happy to be doing the exact opposite. It no longer serves marketers well to silo creative and media practices, both equally important in terms of optimization. The power of VidMob’s data-driven platform lies in its ability to unite media and creative, bringing together the many layers of the industry, from advertising platforms and brands to agencies.”
Consumer brand veteran Cesar Melo added “as a commercial leader, I was always looking to create a more efficient content ecosystem in which faster, smarter, data-informed and more cost-effective content could be created to surround the consumer around the world and build brands differently. When I discovered VidMob while trying to do this at PepsiCo, I was blown away by the combination of talented human creativity and technology. And the more I see, the more I like. VidMob is creating a new category, “Intelligent Creative.”
VidMob is the only company to have earned a creative partner badge from every leading social and digital media platform, and its client roster includes many of the world’s most forward-thinking marketing organizations such as Johnson & Johnson and Colgate Palmolive.
A purpose-driven company since Day 1, VidMob donates a portion of every dollar earned to fund Intelligent Creative for non-profit organizations through its 501c(3) VidMob Gives. VidMob Gives has supported 84 NPOs across 63 countries. In 2020, VidMob Gives helped raise over $20 million in partnership with organizations including the CDC Foundation, UN Foundation, Equality Now and the Ronald McDonald House.
About VidMob
VidMob is the world’s first platform for Intelligent Creative that provides an end-to-end solution to help brands improve their marketing results by unifying creative and data. VidMob is the only company in the world to receive a certified creative marketing partner badge from every major social and digital platform. A portion of every dollar VidMob receives is used to fund pro bono creative services for non-profits through its 501(c)(3) VidMob Gives. Most recently, the company was included in Inc. magazine’s annual list of the Best Workplaces for 2020 and VidMob received the 2020 Creative Intelligence Technology Innovation Award from Frost & Sullivan. Learn more about VidMob at www.vidmob.com and VidMob Gives at vidmob.gives.