Programmatic creative leader secures new capital with eye towards expansion
NEW YORK – Spongecell, the leader in programmatic creative technology, has announced that it has secured $10.5 mil. in a combination of debt and equity financing for the company’s growth initiatives. Existing investor Safeguard Scientifics is joined by Pivotal Capital, a leading Silicon Valley venture debt company.
.@Spongecell raises $10.5M to bring #creative and #media closer together
“Spongecell is at the forefront of the current digital advertising transformation to personalized marketing, and we are excited and grateful that a great new partner like Pivotal has come on board to help us achieve our goals,” said Ben Kartzman, Spongecell CEO. “With the release of the recent IAB Dynamic Content Standard, which the Spongecell product team co-authored, programmatic creative is on the cusp of fulfilling on its potential for data-driven, personalized marketing at scale.”
Mr. Kartzman said the new funding would be applied primarily to increased research & development in Spongecell’s market-leading CORE platform and flexible, tag-based, decision engine technology to further maximize the impact of personalized creative. The infusion will also continue to facilitate the adoption of Spongecell’s self-service offering for brand marketers and their creative agencies. Increasingly, advertisers and creative shops are adopting a hands-on-keyboards operating approach to maximize integrated control of the creative, data and messaging for their digital ads on a real-time basis through the Spongecell platform.
This is part of a broader industry trend in which marketers are taking greater ownership of their advertising and marketing tech stacks. Marketers recognize that a Programmatic Creative Platform must sit alongside their DMP, DSP, analytics and other digital advertising platforms. Spongecell has become an attractive partner as brands also start to adopt best-of-breed technology and Software-as-a-service (SaaS) relationships with technology partners.
“As the data-driven programmatic wave has transformed the marketing industry, impactful, relevant and engaging advertising can only fully reach its potential if the creative can be personalized at scale, and this is something brands and advertisers need to take seriously if they want their advertising dollars to produce returns,” said Erik Rasmussen, Managing Director at Safeguard Scientifics. “With its market leading programmatic creative platform CORE, we believe that Spongecell is positioned as a leader to help advertisers improve digital advertising and marketing performance.”
About Spongecell
Spongecell (www.spongecell.com) is an award-winning advertising technology company that makes it easier to transform standard ads into dynamic, interactive digital ad experiences that run anywhere. Using data to drive advertising creative, Spongecell’s technology helps brands, creative and media agencies create more meaningful consumer engagement, without sacrificing speed. Spongecell works with some of the biggest companies in the world to drive their digital advertising campaigns and bring more interactive and engaging ad experiences to potential customers. An independent, privately owned company, Spongecell is headquartered in New York City and has offices across the United States and Europe. For more information, visit www.spongecell.com.
About Safeguard Scientifics
Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE) provides capital and relevant expertise to fuel the growth of technology-driven businesses in healthcare, financial services and digital media. Safeguard targets companies that are capitalizing on the next wave of enabling technologies with a particular focus on the Internet of Everything, enhanced security and predictive analytics. Safeguard typically deploys between $5 million and $25 million over the course of its partnership with a company, initially investing in a Series A or B Round and opportunistically in a Seed Round. Safeguard has a distinguished track record of fostering innovation and building market leaders that spans more than six decades. For more information, please visit www.safeguard.com or follow us on Twitter @safeguard.
