Sell-side programmatic television player Clypd revealed Thursday that it’s raised $19.4 million on Series B funding, led by European television and radio media company RTL Group. TiVo, which inked a partnership last week that will bake TiVo Research and Analytics data products into Clypd’s platform, also contributed funds to the Series B.
Clypd plans to use the funds to grow its staff from 35 employees to 50 employees by the end of the year and to expand into Europe and APAC. Europe-based RTL Group, which is not currently a client, will help with that expansion. “We anticipate a lot of partnering opportunities with RTL, given their asset base and broadcast groups they own,” says Doug Hurd, co-founder and EVP of business development for Clypd.
He added that the company has enough runway to maintain the business for “a long time.”
Clypd’s new hires will focus on improving the company’s sell-side technology. Its two main offerings to media owners are workflow automation and yield optimization. The workflow automation helps remove steps in the selling of TV advertising by integrating with media owners’ custom billing and trafficking systems.
The yield optimization piece helps sellers uncover new media opportunities. That’s where the data comes in. “The tech we provide helps them make better decisions on inventory, and figure out which inventory makes sense to allocate to a third-party rep firm or programmatic, for example,” Hurd said.
Clypd’s goal to bring automation to the media owners is an uphill battle, in part because things are still pretty good for the TV industry. “TV is an existing ecosystem that’s worked well for a long time,” Hurd said. “There’s a lot of money to be made.”
The media owner must be catered to as automation and data-driven buying come to the medium – something Clypd is prepared to do. “Things like programmatic are intriguing, but it needs to be done on TV terms and with the control of the media owner,” said Hurd.
RTL Group has invested heavily in digital technologies. Among its pickups? A $144 million stake in video SSP SpotXchange in July and the acquisition of video lifestyle network StyleHaul in November.
