LDC, the private equity investor which is part of Lloyds Banking Group, has made a £21 million minority investment in Precise TV.
The contextual video AdTech platform says the deal will support its international expansion, including scaling in the United States.
Precise TV was founded in 2015 and operates globally through its teams in London, Los Angeles and New York, as well as its offices in Sydney, Australia and Salzburg, Austria.
The contextual intelligence platform leverages proprietary machine learning models to connect brands and agencies to the video moments that matter across YouTube, Shorts, Facebook, TikTok, Connected TV and Mobile Gaming, driving lower funnel conversions for advertisers looking to limit media wastage.
Its platform uses AI to analyse millions of online videos, licensed data sources and its own panel data to build contextualised advertising campaigns for its clients, which includes global business and consumer brands such as LEGO, Moose Toys, Warner Bros, Paramount, Breville, Salesforce and ASICS.
LDC is backing Precise TV’s existing management team, led by co-founders and co-CEOs Nadav Shmuel and Christian Dankl, chief commercial officer Denis Crushell and chief technology officer Peter Stöckl.
The transaction was led by David Andrews, Dan Gluckman and Eliza Tracey in LDC’s London office. David and Dan will both join the board as non-executive directors, alongside former Google executive Jen Thompson who joins as a board advisor and brings more than 18 years’ experience.
“This is an important milestone for the business. Since we founded the company almost a decade ago, we’ve focused on building the best contextualised advertising tech stack in the market for our clients,” said Shmuel.
“With LDC’s support, we can continue investing to stay ahead of the curve whilst taking our proposition to a wider market, with a particular focus on the US where we see a significant growth opportunity.
“LDC’s track record in backing technology and media businesses really stood out for us, and we’ve already built an excellent relationship with David, Dan, Eliza and the team at LDC. They clearly understand the scale of the opportunity available to us and we can’t wait to get started.”
Dankl added: “Demand for our proprietary offering has increased rapidly in recent years with the widespread decline of cookie-based advertising and the growth of video streaming platforms led by YouTube.
“We now have more resources to invest and bolster our leading role driving bottom-line business outcomes for brands through contextual video advertising.”
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