tvScientific, a CTV ad tech business specialising in measuring and managing performance advertising on streaming TV, today announced the completion of a $25.5 million Series B funding round.
The round was led by investment firm NewRoad Capital Partners, alongside smart TV and streaming company Roku, as well as private equity firm Second Alpha Partners. The round also included existing investors in tvScientific, namely Norwest Venture Partners, Progress Ventures and Sir Martin Sorrell-backed S4S Ventures.
Jason Fairchild, Co-Founder and CEO of tvScientific, said the funding would be “critical” to the company’s aim for a tenfold increase in the value of the CTV ad market. He notes that Statista forecasts put the current CTV market at $30 billion, expected to grow to $42 billion by 2028.
“But those figures assume CTV advertising is restricted to brand advertisers,” Fairchild said in a post announcing the raise. “We think CTV advertising is a 10x larger opportunity. It will get there by becoming a performance channel, which will open CTV to performance advertisers, including ecomm brands and SMBs, who have made search and social a combined $500 billion category.”
CTV’s performance era
While the high spending commitments associated with TV have traditionally restricted the channel to larger brands, there are moves on the sell side to open the door to smaller advertisers, aiming to create more flexible, less costly paths to purchase on connected TV.
As part of that shift, tvScientific provides performance-based advertising tools for TV, seeking to recreate the reporting conditions that drive SMBs to digital platforms such as Meta and Google. Last year the company completed a $9.4 million round with S4S Ventures, a venture capital firm co-founded by Sir Martin Sorrell, who commented that “partners who can drive lower funnel activation, performance, measurement, and ROI are positioned for huge success.”
tvScientific’s self-serve ad buying platform enables advertisers to buy on a cost-per-outcome basis, with outcomes including purchases, ROAS or post-campaign traffic. The company also has proprietary deterministic ID technology, which it says can reach 95 percent of ad-supported streaming (AVOD) audiences, alongside partnerships with retail data providers to power outcome measurement.
Fairchild said the latest investment would be used to further build out its suite of technologies around “identity, outcome measurement, and ML/AI-driven TV outcome optimisation.” He added that making TV more of a performance channel could help ease marketers reliance on search and social, which have come under increasing regulatory pressure.
“Hundreds of advertisers have already used tvScientific to drive performance outcomes on CTV,” said Fairchild. “With this funding, we’ll aim to 10X our customer base in the next two years. In doing so, we’ll transform the TV ad market and usher in the era of outcome-based advertising on TV.”
