Brisbane Startup Adgile Media Secures International Investor

Queensland-based marketing technology company Adgile Media has secured international financial backing and closed out Series A funding for the first phase of its global expansion.

Singapore-based venture capital firm Rajah Blue Media Holdings has fully backed Adgile’s plan to roll out its proprietary technology that delivers real-time insights into television advertising’s effectiveness.

Adgile’s chief revenue officer, Craig Service, said the company will now roll-out tech installation into Singapore, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, US, UK, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan in the next 12 months with its breakthrough.

Service said: “The Adgile full-stack technology has been developed over three and a half years and is fully operational in Australia and New Zealand.

“We have focused our work to date with a select group of national brands to build out the model.

“Our recently announced partnership with the Nine Entertainment Co (NEC) provides the opportunity to now build the offering out the commercial model at scale in Australia as we roll-out the tech into the global market.”

Adgile is in the process of registering 14 patents globally.

Service said the Adgile suite brought transparency and measurability to television advertising that had never been seen before.

Rajah Blue Media Holdings spokesperson Mark Radford said the VC experts quickly recognised that Adgile was unique in a space that was heating up globally.

He said: “Having looked at what Adgile has done in Australia and New Zealand, the robust, granular quality of their data, strong analytics suite and real-time functionality of the technology, it was a good fit for us.

“Given the significant demand for this type of effectiveness and attribution data globally and the fact Adgile’s technology is extremely scalable, it was not a hard decision for us to fund this expansion.”

Rajah Blue Media Holdings director Grant Wechsel, who will lead the firm’s involvement in the Adgile Media business along with Radford, added: “The group will also actively assist in the international roll-out with a number of highly prospective markets already identified.”

Adgile currently tracks every major broadcast signal in Australia and New Zealand and the partnership with NEC will deliver its TV effectiveness product more broadly in the Australian market.

Adgile Media has developed a technology that tracks, interprets and collects data from TV broadcasts in real-time.

By watching and cataloguing television data 24/7, Adgile collects granular outputs that drill down to brand, product, offer and price.  Adgile then overlays its first-party data with audience analysis, API-integrated client website data and ultimately sales data to produce measurements of TV effectiveness.

It can provide detailed attribution output for a client’s television expenditure – and does this with full competitor context.

Service said: “The Holy Grail for TV advertisers is to close the ROI loop.

“Adgile gives brands the ability to determine the real effect TV advertising has on business outcomes.

“Moreover, we can deliver this data in real-time and with a 360-degree view of the effects of any competitor TV activity.

“We believe our technology is unique globally, so the obvious next step was to go international with it as quickly as possible.”

During 2019 Adgile will roll out its technology across key markets.

Service continued: “Our initial international expansion is very strategic. We have chosen market entries that initially allow our technology stack to collect data immediately.

“On the whole these markets have similar maturity and advertising-vs-content structures.

“These markets will also provide important learnings for future expansion.”

Adgile’s chief intelligence officer, Shaun Lohman, said the company had invested countless hours developing and perfecting the platform.

He said: “We truly believe with our end-to-end offering from first-party data, proprietary analytics and real-time insights we have a unique offering.

“Having Rajah Blue Media Holdings and Nine partner with us has certainly delivered some very welcome external validation.

“You couldn’t wish for better partners – quality organisations who are smart, progressive and extremely supportive – importantly they also challenge us.

“Firmly on our radar in the near future is further international expansion and the development of a programmatic TV marketplace where broadcast TV is traded, measured and optimised the same way as Facebook or Google ads are.

“We believe Rajah Blue and NEC are the perfect companions for Adgile on this journey.”