Third-party cookies may not be disappearing this year, but alternative targeting solutions like contextual advertising are still top of mind for marketers.
On Tuesday, contextual intelligence platform Precise TV announced an investment of 21 million pounds (roughly $26 million) from UK-based private equity investor LDC, which is part of Lloyds Banking Group.
This investment marks the first time Precise TV is receiving private equity funding.
Founded in London in 2015, Precise TV helps brands plan and target campaigns for social video, mobile games and streaming TV. The company launched with a mission to protect kid-focused programming from brand-unsafe ads, but has since expanded its offerings to cater to other verticals such as gaming, travel and activewear.
Precise TV’s profitable growth over the past few years made it an attractive investment target, said David Andrews, a partner at LDC.
Other than a smaller angel investment in 2016, Precise TV has been self-funded until now. But as demand for more privacy-friendly ad targeting options intensifies, Precise TV needed an institutional investment to pursue its long-term goals and stay competitive, Nadav Shmuel, co-CEO and co-founder, told AdExchanger.
The main items on Precise TV’s agenda will be to grow its US presence, its mobile gaming footprint and its AI capabilities.
To be more precise
Precise TV is known for contextual targeting, but it also offers behavioral targeting capabilities.
Contextual and behavioral work better as a pair, said Christian Dankl, the startup’s co-founder and co-CEO.
Precise TV’s tech stack includes survey data on TV preferences from a research panel of tens of thousands of households, plus point-of-sale data from retailers such as Target, Walmart and Amazon. Precise uses its panel to plan video ad placements for users over 13 years old.
Currently, the US accounts for more than half of Precise TV’s revenue, Dankl said, indicating a rising demand for its products in the region. Over the past few years, the US advertising ecosystem has been increasingly focused on building privacy-friendly targeting solutions and embracing data collection practices that are more on par with European standards, he said.
Plus, the US is great for scale.
Many international companies centralize business in the US, so a wider US footprint also gives Precise a better springboard to make inroads into other countries, Shmuel said.
And global expansion lays the groundwork for growth into new channels.
One especially ripe growth area for Precise is gaming, because it’s already very context-oriented, Dankl said. The context and tone of a particular game or cutscene are critical clues for effective in-game advertising, while genre can help guide mobile app install campaigns. (Someone who plays puzzle games on their phone, for example, is likely to be interested in other puzzle games.)
Precise can use its contextual data to drive and measure lower-funnel conversions, including app installs and sales, Dankl said.
Finally, to help grow its client base, Precise plans to invest in more advanced AI capabilities to draw quicker connections between audiences and media consumption habits, Dankl said.
Although it’s still too soon to share specifics about precisely what Precise is building on the AI front, he said, the focus will be on audience measurement, which may involve custom algorithms.
