Investment will bring AI-fueled voice ads to more brands, audio and video content publishers, and consumers; Progress Ventures leads the round, with Accomplice and Google Assistant Investments participating
PALO ALTO, Calif. – Instreamatic, providing an end-to-end voice AI platform for managing, measuring and monetizing conversations between brand and consumer, today announced it has raised $6.1 million in Series A funding. Progress Ventures led the round, joined by Accomplice and Google Assistant Investments. The funding enables Instreamatic to quickly scale its technical and business staff; expand the capabilities of its voice AI conversational-dialogue infrastructure; and pursue more global partnerships with brands, audio and video content publishers, advertising platforms, and application developers.
“The future of advertising on audio and video platforms is in two-way brand-consumer engagement,” said Stas Tushinskiy, CEO, Instreamatic. “It’s clear that the traditional one-way model is broken. Consumers don’t like being fed annoyingly repetitive ads. Brands are under ever-increasing pressure to make those moments meaningful while supporting strong ROI demands. On the publisher side, audio and video platforms need a better way to prove their audiences and ad inventory deliver their promise to brands. Our voice AI infrastructure, deployed by brands such as IKEA, Infiniti, and HP and across platforms like Pandora and Gaana, is empirically demonstrating that conversational marketing benefits brands, consumers, and publishers alike. We enable the brand-consumer conversation.”
Voice ads by Instreamatic have averaged a 12% voice engagement rate, with some campaigns reaching 19%. Instreamatic’s unique voice AI infrastructure enables brands to deliver verbal calls-to-action as part of their audio and video ad creative. Speaking aloud, consumers can respond to ads with a single-word or a short dialogue response to continue a two-way interaction or to quickly return to their content. Instreamatic’s AI capabilities understand the intent and tone of consumers’ natural and conversational responses to take the appropriate next action.
Importantly, Instreamatic’s technology enables continuous dialogues based on an individual consumer’s previous interactions with that brand. This enables brands to customize future voice engagement to individuals knowing exactly where that consumer is in the buyer lifecycle, and not waste budget on disinterested consumers with repetitive ad impressions. Voice ad campaigns pioneered by major brands have demonstrated the power of these brief interactive ads to engage listeners in brand experiences they find both likeable and memorable.
Instreamatic continues to sign publisher and partner agreements that expand the reach of its unique technology. In addition to audio content platforms and networks such as Pandora, Salem Media, and Gaana, Instreamatic’s recent deal with Universal Electronics expands voice ads into the smart-TV industry.
“Consumer demand for audio and video content, and the ubiquity of smart devices delivering that content on-demand, continues to accelerate,” said Nick MacShane, the Founding Partner at Progress Ventures, the venture capital arm of Progress Partners, a full-service merchant bank. “What hasn’t caught up is how brands and publishers can effectively engage those audiences in the same medium and analytically prove the ROI of their audio and video platform ad spend. We’re proud to help Instreamatic build value for the digital future, proving that its model is a solution for advertisers, publishers, and consumers who clearly prefer natural voice-driven interactions.”
About Instreamatic
Instreamatic is a voice AI infrastructure for media, enabling real-time voice conversations between brands and consumers across multiple media verticals. The company provides an end-to-end solution for managing, measuring, and monetizing voice-enabled audio and video advertising, including a programmatic ad exchange for assisting clients with advertising sales. People can speak with ads and the ads can talk back in an intelligent and adaptive way, connecting and engaging brands with the customers that love them. Founded in 2015, Instreamatic is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
Please visit instreamatic.com for more information.
About Progress Ventures
Progress Ventures is the venture capital arm of Progress Partners, a full-service merchant bank specializing in the advertising, marketing, and media technology sectors. As a sector specialist fund, Progress Ventures is building value for the digital future by investing in B2B companies focused on disruptive technologies. With decades of experience and an extensive relationship network the firm intimately understands the nuanced market dynamics and the innovative players who are propelling the industry forward. Bold partners with a future vision for the sector, the firm takes a proactive approach to sourcing opportunities and working with entrepreneurial leaders on the cutting edge of advertising, marketing, and media technology.
Please visit www.progressventures.com for more information.
About the Google Assistant investment program
Launched in 2018, the Google Assistant investment program supports early stage companies that are moving the voice and assistance ecosystem forward across a diverse range of fields, from travel to games. The program provides access to Google engineers, product managers, and design experts to share technical guidance and product development feedback, as well as features and tools so startups can bring their products to market as quickly as possible.
