German entertainment media network RTL Group has led a $15 million Series A investment in VideoAmp, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup focused on helping buyers plan, purchase and measure unduplicated audiences across mobile, over-the-top TV, video on demand and so on.
Other investors include Anthem Venture Partners, Simon Equity Partners and Third Wave Capital.
Prior to the new round, announced Wednesday, VideoAmp had raised $2.2 million in seed financing and had grown its team, which it says are primarily engineers, to 43 in less than two years.
The new financing will primarily go toward product development and to staff up in engineering, sales and client services. VideoAmp hopes to have about 60 people by the second quarter of 2016.
RTL Group’s investment in VideoAmp follows its acquisition of Denver-based video supply-side platform SpotX, YouTube multichannel video network StyleHaul and BroadbandTV and a $19.4 million investment in Clypd, a programmatic TV tool focused on the sell side.
RTL is adding to its chest of video ad tech technologies and even formed a dedicated unit called the RTL Digital Hub last June to oversee and evolve its video and digital ad sales efforts.
“The US market in terms of online video [still dwarfs] European markets in terms of overall revenue potential,” said Rhys Noelke, SVP of strategy for RTL Group, who joined VideoAmp’s board of directors. “Scale matters and to us, scaling up on technology in the US makes a lot of sense.”
VideoAmp co-founder and CEO Ross McCray described its main product, Screen Optimization Platform, as such: “The idea is to have this database that stores all of these signals and to enable open API access on top of that.”
“We’re focused on building data enablement solutions,” he said, “not just a DSP or SSP, so buyers can form a common denominator across screens and build plans around audiences, not just inventory and channel.”
Although VideoAmp is a fairly young company, Noelke believes RTL’s investment complements other pieces of its stack, including SpotX. For instance, SpotX publishers will be able to augment VideoAmp’s data offering to support audience targeting cross-device.
“VideoAmp was another piece of the puzzle that made sense to us,” Noelke added. “Everyone’s hungry to solve the cross-screen dilemma out there and make it more meaningful to buyers and suppliers.”
