true[X] offers interactive ad units that begin as standard display or text ads and, when clicked, open full-screen experiences with video and interactive capabilities. The company provides advertisers with engagement and measurement data, including time spent with ads, impressions, social sharing, and brand-awareness metrics. Its advertiser roster includes American Express, Best Buy, and Jack in the Box. true[X] recently added high-profile board members — James Murdoch, Jonathan Miller, and Mich Mathews — to support growth and publisher recruitment. CEO Joe Marchese says the company is targeting big-name publishers that prioritize ad quality over volume and has compared current industry practices to the subprime mortgage era. The product focus and measurement capabilities underpin the company’s push to displace low-quality impression-based inventory. SocialVibe builds a brand engagement advertising platform that delivers opt-in engagement ad units across web and mobile. Its technology is deeply integrated with social and mobile sites such as Pandora, Causes, Huffington Post and Zynga, and it powers engagement advertising on eight of the top 10 Facebook apps, reaching approximately 200 million global consumers. The company handles millions of brand interactions every day and reports average engagement metrics of 63 seconds per engagement, an 80% completion rate, 41% visiting a fan page or website, 30% showing purchase intent, and 15% sharing the experience. SocialVibe works with advertising agencies to create targeted, shareable brand content that can be incorporated into users’ social feeds, turning paid media into earned media. Its client roster includes GE, Best Buy, Disney, Nestle, McDonalds, Coke, American Express, AT&T and Toyota, and case studies (for example a Kia Super Bowl campaign) showed high dwell times, strong share rates and a 67% mobile click-through to Kia’s mobile site. The company plans to use growth capital to accelerate global adoption of its platform.

Total raised

$26M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

May 2014