When Teads and French vendor Ebuzzing merged in 2014, the combined pair said they planned to acquire other firms. Three rounds of financing later, and the outfit looks set to do just that.
The company, which helps publishers deliver auto-playing video ads between text paragraphs, just secured €43m ($47m) in debt financing from a syndicate of five banks.
“M&A targets for Teads may include smaller ad tech startups developing technologies that Teads can leverage,” according to an announcement, which also commits Teads to building on its Japanese foothold by launching in South-East Asia this year and in China next year.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Teads’ US president Jim Daily claims it was Teads which kickstarted the current vogue for this video ad format, known as “outstream”.
“We invented it”, he says. “It started back in 2011.” Agencies now think outstream video ads will be more important than in-stream or banner ads to their clients, according to a Forrester report published last year.
And Teads is amongst the biggest beneficiaries. “About 65% of the comScore top 300 publishers are actively utilising the Teads platform for outstream video,” Daily adds. “From a brand perspective, we’re working with 85% of the top 100 global spenders.”
Teads has now raised a total $55m across a combined nine financings attributed to both Teads and Ebuzzing, according to Crunchbase. The latest round is easily the largest of the lot.
Given the changing perception of markets and investors toward ad-tech, it may be notable that Teads is taking this round from banks. At the time of the merger, Teads had talked of going public in an IPO in 2015. After faltering performance of some separate companies, observers have talked of a thawing in such prospects.
