Inovia Capital

StrongestLayer Raises $4.1M, Total Seed $9.3M

StrongestLayer, an AI-native email security company, raised $4.1 million in new funding — bringing its total seed to $9.3 million — in a round led by Inovia Capital with participation from Sorenson Capital, LaunchPod, Alumni Ventures and investor Chris Key (formerly Mandiant's CPO). The startup says its reasoning-based architecture inspects intent rather than relying on signatures or reputation, and that production deployments have grown more than eightfold since its initial funding a year earlier. The new capital will be used for go-to-market and platform expansion as StrongestLayer prepares for a planned Series A.

Video Ad Startups Ignite A Funding Fire

Video ad tech funding remained robust in early 2015. Vidyard announced an $18 million Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from iNovia Capital, OMERS Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and SoftTech VC, bringing total financing to $25.7 million and supporting growth from 60 to 100 employees. Vidyard provides a video marketing automation platform that creates, hosts, distributes, and tracks video content with CRM and marketing automation integrations. Teads, a publisher-focused video ad platform, raised $30 million in financing (equity $15 million; the remainder via a mid-term credit line from Bank of China and HSBC) and reported $100 million in net revenue for the previous year, up 65% YoY. Teads’ inRead format activates sound/motion on scroll and leverages semantic analysis to align ads with content, with over 500 premium publishers including Hearst, Condé Nast, Reuters and The Washington Post. The article also notes four video ad tech acquisitions in H2 2014 (LiveRail, SpotXchange, Videoplaza, Ooyala) and Teads’ 2014 merger with eBuzzing, indicating strong growth in the space.

Funding TagMan; Digital Share

AdExchanger's Friday roundup covers TagMan's funding round, eMarketer's mobile and digital ad spend forecasts, a Rallyverse–LinkedIn partnership, GPShopper's mobile-behavior insights, and Facebook's ad/image system updates. TagMan announced a $5 million inside round led by Greycroft and iNovia, increasing total funding to over $13 million and earmarking funds for its STREAM partner program (about 300 partners). eMarketer projects digital media ad spend rising to roughly 25% of total spend in the current year (2013) and 31.1% by 2017, with mobile ad spend set to 15.8% by 2017 (~$31.1 billion). Rallyverse disclosed a LinkedIn partnership to publish posts across the web, with CEO Joe Doran commenting on content strategy. GPShopper’s Alex Muller discussed middling mobile conversion versus desktop and introduced the idea of 'micro sessions' as a distinct mobile behavior generating net new traffic. Facebook revealed updates to its image system for ads and its Page Manager app, including free Shutterstock access, multi-image uploads, and more admins.