MarTechInvestment

A rapidly growing marketing analytics firm is eyeing further UK expansion – including recruitment in the North – after raising £88 million in funding.

Adverity employs 100 people on these shores and there are no plans to stop there after the Series D financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Existing investor Sapphire Ventures also participated in the round.

Adverity’s mission is to transform marketing performance through intelligent data-driven insights. The Vienna-born business – with offices in London and New York – has seen a 120% client uplift in the last 12 months amid an expanding portfolio of global brands and agencies that include IKEA, Red Bull, Unilever, MediaCom, and Vodafone. 

This follows the best quarter in company history, a compound annual growth rate of 105% in the past four years, and a rapidly growing global team that has increased in size by 300% since 2019. 

The UK makes up around a quarter of its overall global business.

“In the UK, there are approximately 100 people but the company is growing at a fast pace so the figure is constantly changing,” the founders told BusinessCloud.

“Adverity is leveraging a work from anywhere approach, giving employees the opportunity to work anywhere in the UK and manage their time in a way that best supports their lifestyle. 

“As a result, we do not need to be London-centric in our recruitment, allowing for more diverse teams and work environments, which also aligns with the trend of media companies relocating to northern cities.”

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With three investment rounds in as many years, the announcement comes less than 16 months after Adverity’s $30m Series C. This latest round brings the company’s total funding to more than $165m. 

“The UK has always had a global reputation for pioneering marketing and advertising, which is now worth £15 billion,” the founders continued. “It is also the home to many global media agencies and has the largest trade surplus in advertising services across Europe. 

“For instance, the UK is the number two country after the US for creative advertising. The UK is driving creativity at an international level, making it a key market for us. 

“The funding will have considerable impact on Adverity’s growth in the UK specifically. The company plans to increase its headcount to 400 by the end of 2021, and double this number by the end of next year. The UK is among the regions that will most benefit from this rapid growth.”

The platform is pioneering the move towards predictive analytics, where automatic flagging of anomalies, trends and patterns enables marketers to proactively identify and seize emerging opportunities and address potential problems. 

Its latest feature, ROI Advisor, has been released as a direct response to data privacy concerns as it allows marketers to track performance without the need for third-party cookies.

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CEO and co-founder Alexander Igelsböck added: “There are a multitude of marketing tools available but the quantity of new tools that marketers implement doesn’t matter – what matters are the insights that help companies drive growth and avoid missteps. In today’s data-centric climate, every successful company must have data analytics at its core.

“SoftBank Vision Fund 2 recognised the value in our business, understanding that our platform is a critical component for any modern Martech stack. Using automation to do the heavy lifting, marketers can move beyond ‘point in time’ performance data and harness insights that not only power and validate better decisions now, but fuel proactive choices to improve future outcomes.”