Real-time bidding company, YD, which has been entirely self-funded until now, just announced that is has received a cool €4.6 million in venture capital funding.
YD has its hopes set on using the multi-million investment to bring its programmatic advertising product to more direct advertisers by expanding international sales and strengthening its technical development team.
The company’s first round of funding has been led by Partech Ventures Berlin along with Active Venture Partners. Financial advice was provided by Corporate Finance Partners and legal counsel came from Jones Day and Lexence.
Growth by Disruption
Using display advertising to disrupt the customer journey has a lot to do with YD’s 900% growth between 2008-2012. It is also the catalyst behind the investment, according to Gabriel Matuschka, principal at Partech Ventures.
“As one of the earliest disruptive display advertising leaders in Europe, YD has proven a great success in the last few years,” Matuschka said. “YD’s rapid growth shows that the programmatic buying space is led by pure technology companies and ad-exchange specialists.”
Founded in 2008, YD has evolved from an operator of third-party solutions to developing Impulse, its in-house programmatic advertising platform that is said to tap into the global brand trend for big data decision making.
Impulse lets a growing number of advertisers tap their digital revenue into programmatic advertising, with the added benefit that it does away with the lack of transparency in agency services and media fees.
Aviation and telecommunication are seen as one of YD’s more successful stomping grounds, with clients such as Air France-KLM, Transavia, LAN Airlines, Air Berlin, T-Mobile, Telekom Deutschland and UPC.