Upfront Ventures

InfoSum Raises $15 Million And Adds Brian Lesser As Executive Chairman

InfoSum, a UK-based data platform for privacy-preserving data matching, announced a $15 million funding round and appointed Brian Lesser as executive chairman. The round was led by Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures, with strategic support from Ascential, Akamai, Experian, ITV, and AT&T's Xandr, where Lesser formerly served as CEO. The company plans to use the funds to expand North American sales and marketing, with Lesser overseeing the effort. Founder and CEO Nick Halstead highlighted the growth objective in North America. InfoSum uses federated learning to enable anonymized data matching without transferring raw data and counts more than 50 multinational clients, including eBay and ITV.

Xandr Invests in InfoSum

AT&T's ad tech arm Xandr announced an investment in InfoSum, a first-party data platform and identity infrastructure provider. Terms were not disclosed. InfoSum, founded in 2015, offers a privacy-preserving approach that lets companies combine siloed first-party data via a 'bunker' and a federated architecture, enabling analyses without sharing raw data. The deal underscores a shift toward first-party data as privacy regulations and cookie-blocking browsers push advertisers to rely on owned data stores. InfoSum previously raised $8 million in seed funding from Upfront Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and LocalGlobe. Xandr’s access to first-party data is bolstered by AT&T’s direct relationships with 150 million+ customers, positioning both companies to activate data in a cookie-free world and help publishers compete with Google and Facebook through privacy-centric data collaborations.

Markenwerbung kreuzt die Screens

An interview with Jörg Schneider, Country Manager Germany at Undertone, discusses cross-screen branding and the company's approach to distributing ads across desktop, tablet, and mobile. Undertone emphasizes three core factors for effective cross-screen campaigns: cross-screen-ready creatives, brand-safe media planning, and device-spanning technology that connects screens via a single ad server, enabling consistent delivery and unified reporting. The discussion notes that mobile banners remain limited for branding, with newer formats like Push-Down ads sliding the page and expanding to video when interacted with. Undertone positions itself as a technology service provider to agencies and media buyers, supplying cross-screen environments and handling HTML5 creatives. The company recently acquired the tech firm Upfront to bolster its programmatic capabilities and favours private exchanges for automated buying while integrating branding and performance with automation.