Home Platforms LucidMedia Announces $4.5 Million In Funding; CEO Ajay Sravanapudi Discusses Plans
Platforms

LucidMedia Announces $4.5 Million In Funding; CEO Ajay Sravanapudi Discusses Plans

By AdExchanger

SHARE:

LucidMediaLucidMedia announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in new funds led by MMV Financial (MMV).  Read the release.

Ajay Sravanapudi, CEO at LucidMedia, discussed the new funding and the company’s plans.

AdExchanger.com: Please discuss your new round of funding and why you chose MMV.

AS: We had many options available to us in this round but MMV was the ideal funding partner at this stage in our execution plan and capitalization strategy.  MMV is truly dedicated to providing timely and effective growth capital to emerging technology companies like LucidMedia.  They are focused on the North American market and the amount of capital they typically provide ranges from $1.5M to $10.0M which was also a perfect fit for us.

Where do you see the $4.5 million going?  Any critical needs such as “feet on the street”?

We are applying the proceeds from this funding round to expand on our recently launched self-service platform that gives agencies and advertisers more control and enables them to more efficiently manage their display advertising campaigns. The funds are being used to bring additional capabilities to market and to do so sooner so we can better capture the escalating DSP opportunity.  And since we own the full technology stack in our demand-side platform, with the additional funds we are launching new capabilities not as disparate products but as unified new features within our platform.  It allows us to be more nimble and responsive to our advertiser’s requirements.

Are there too many demand-side platforms today and how will LucidMedia differentiate?

There are not really all that many demand-side platforms out there.  Much of the static in the DSP space today is centered around attracting attention in the venture capital circles.  But when it comes to getting in front of an advertiser and demonstrating real capabilities in a real product that you can actually use to deliver value and efficiency, the number of DSPs can be counted on one hand (minus a few fingers).  There are too many companies calling themselves a demand-side platform though.  We have run hundreds of successful campaigns for the majority of Fortune 500 companies out there over the last 18 months that we have been operating as a DSP.  In that time we have proven that several capabilities are unique to what LucidMedia offers.  This includes our proprietary contextual and audience targeting, ability to police a true universal frequency cap (UFC), and real-time assessment (RTA) across all sources.  In addition, our DSP provides dynamic inventory allocation across RTB sources and even premium buys, true preemptive brand safety, and campaign optimization at the page-level.  We also offer custom integrations with all 3rd party data providers, real-time bid (RTB) inventory availability insights by channel, and a server-side cookie store for proprietary audience targeting.

By John Ebbert

Must Read

Comic: No One To Play With
Privacy

Google Pulls The Plug On Topics, PAAPI And Other Major Privacy Sandbox APIs (As The CMA Says ‘Cheerio’)

Google’s aborted cookie crackdown ends with a quiet CMA sign-off and a sweeping phaseout of Privacy Sandbox technologies, from the Topics API to PAAPI.

Platforms

The Trade Desk’s Auction Evolutions Bring High Drama To The Prebid Summit

TTD shared new details about OpenAds features that let publishers see for themselves whether it’s running a fair auction. But tension between TTD and Prebid hung over the event.

Monopoly Man looks on at the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial (comic).
antitrust

How Google Stands In The DOJ’s Ad Tech Antitrust Suit, According To Those Who Tracked The Trial

The remedies phase of the Google antitrust trial concluded last week. And after 11 days in the courtroom, there is a clearer sense of where Judge Leonie Brinkema is focused on, and how that might influence what remedies she put in place.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Marketers

The Ad Context Protocol Aims To Make Sense Of Agentic Ad Demand

The AI advertising agents will need their own trade group eventually. For now though, a bunch of companies are forming the Ad Context Protocol, or AdCP.

Digital Out-Of-Home

OUTFRONT Is Using Agencies’ AI Enthusiasm To Spur Wider Programmatic OOH Adoption

The desire for a data-driven reinvention of OOH inspired OUTFRONT to create agentic AI tools for executing and measuring OOH campaigns and comparing OOH to other channels.

Publishers

Inside PubDesk, The Trade Desk’s New Dashboard That Shows What Buyers Actually Care About

A peek inside PubDesk, The Trade Desk’s new dashboard that gives sellers detailed info on how buyers value their inventory.

Popular

  1. Comic: No One To Play With
    Privacy

    Google Pulls The Plug On Topics, PAAPI And Other Major Privacy Sandbox APIs (As The CMA Says ‘Cheerio’)

    Google’s aborted cookie crackdown ends with a quiet CMA sign-off and a sweeping phaseout of Privacy Sandbox technologies, from the Topics API to PAAPI.

  2. Comic: In The Media Mix
    Marketers

    MMM Isn’t As Scary As Marketers Think – But You’ve Got To Do It Right

    Deli meat company Land O’Frost has been leaning into a new MMM approach to figure out which opportunities it’s been overlooking – or even inhibiting.

  3. Marketers

    The Ad Context Protocol Aims To Make Sense Of Agentic Ad Demand

    The AI advertising agents will need their own trade group eventually. For now though, a bunch of companies are forming the Ad Context Protocol, or AdCP.

  4. Platforms

    The Trade Desk’s Auction Evolutions Bring High Drama To The Prebid Summit

    TTD shared new details about OpenAds features that let publishers see for themselves whether it’s running a fair auction. But tension between TTD and Prebid hung over the event.

  5. PODCAST: The Big Story

    Prebid, Meet OpenAds

    Shortly after Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green said the DSP would splinter off from Prebid, he showed up at the Prebid Summit. Then, at ScreenShift, we learn what the TV industry thinks about AI.