Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) want to capitalize on the rise in streaming consumption but lack the budgets for upfront commitments.
That’s why self-serve CTV is starting to have its moment.
On Thursday, Vibe.co, a CTV ad platform that caters to SMBs, announced its $22.5 million Series A round, bringing the company’s total funding to roughly $30 million since it launched in 2021.
The round was led by investment firm Singular, with participation from Sequoia’s Scout Fund and Motier Ventures. Elaia Partners, the firm that led Vibe’s $7.5 million seed-funding round in 2022, also contributed.
Arthur Querou, Vibe’s co-founder and CEO, told AdExchanger that the company has two interrelated priorities on the product side: machine learning and measurement.
Some of the funding will also go toward hiring to expand the company’s ad sales and tech teams.
Vibe’s goal, Querou said, is to achieve $100 million in projected annual revenue as quickly as possible. Although he declined to share the company’s total revenue for 2023, Querou did say it was in the “tens of millions.”
Why now?
Self-serve platforms are getting the TV industry’s attention because they simplify the process of TV and video ad buying, including the ability to pace smaller media budgets throughout a campaign cycle.
Historically, “SMBs were really underserved by the traditional TV business,” said ad tech vet Ari Paparo, who joined Vibe’s board earlier this month. Self-serve is a “big opportunity to bring more advertisers to the table,” he said.
There are a handful of other ad buying platforms that focus on the SMB market, including Simpli.fi and Locality, although they have different niches than Vibe. Locality also specializes in local broadcasts, and Simpli.fi is multichannel, whereas Vibe is exclusively doing streaming.
Vibe says it gained more than 2,000 new advertiser clients in the past 16 months. Brands buying CTV supply from Vibe include Blink Fitness, mobile game developer Scopely and private injury firm Lawboss. Vibe also works with well-known national brands such as Hyundai and John Deere.
The new funding will help Vibe keep pace with rising demand, Paparo said, while also doing even more customer acquisition.
Vibe’s machine learning machinations
To attract more demand, Vibe will invest in beefing up its machine learning tech to build models that can better connect streaming ad impressions with conversions. More robust machine learning should also help Vibe do more sophisticated A/B testing.
In both cases, Vibe expects feedback from its machine learning models to inform campaign planning and, as a result, improve campaign performance.
Since Vibe launched, it has relied on IP addresses to link ad exposures with campaign results, and it still does.
But Vibe is keen to diversify, Querou said, so as to be less reliant on personal information. Although IP addresses are still widely used for ad targeting and attribution on CTV, some state privacy laws, including in California, categorize them as personally identifiable information, casting a shadow of uncertainty over the future of IP addresses in TV advertising.
Which is why Vibe is shifting to A/B testing and brand uplift studies for campaign measurement. The company also works with mobile attribution platforms, such as AppsFlyer and Adjust, for help measuring lower-funnel outcomes, such as app installs.
And Vibe is distancing itself from data brokers, Querou said, because they don’t have granular-enough data – and, to be fair, third-party data sets do have gaps.
Vibe’s road map to supply
But these moves are also being spurred by privacy regulations and platform changes to restrict the availability of third-party data for marketing. (Did someone say cookies?)
So Vibe is turning more of its attention to first-party data sources, too, including streaming publishers.
More direct access to publisher supply will allow for more transparency into inventory compared to what’s available programmatically, Querou said, which, in turn, can help improve campaign performance and measurement.
Vibe declined to name the programmers it currently works with or the prospective partners it’s talking to, but Querou said Vibe’s DSP has direct integrations with most of the major streaming platforms other than Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. It’s also integrated with nearly every large SSP.
