Ad-Lib, a UK-based marketing technology SaaS platform that helps global brands manage and automate the production and activation of creative assets in their digital advertising worldwide, has announced it has closed $6million in Series A funding from San Francisco-based Fog City Capital.
Ad-Lib will use the funding to further strengthen its technology platform, which uses AI to streamline creative ad production workflows, automate digital asset creation and optimise creative performance across display, video, social, native and mobile.
The company will also build out its senior leadership team, expand further in EMEA and APAC and launch its US headquarters in New York.
Technology has penetrated the media buying, analytics and ad-serving space, but for many brands their biggest challenge is the requirement for creative cross-channel, cross-format and cross location.
Ad-Lib is uniquely positioned to enable brands to improve digital campaign performance through better creative. Ad-Lib’s intelligence platform streamlines digital ad workflows, automating standard processes to reduce the time it takes to build campaigns.
Ad-Lib was founded in 2017 by CEO Oli Marlow Thomas and it currently employs 80 staff in offices in London, Madrid, Dubai, Singapore and more. The business is currently growing more than 300% year-on-year, driving efficiencies of 78% time saving and 59% production cost saving for some of the world’s biggest brands such as Nestle, J&J and Virgin, whilst also improving their campaign performance by up to 77%.
“There is no technology infrastructure in the creative space meaning digital ads that reach the biggest audiences continue to be poor quality. With all other aspects of media buying already automated, creative is becoming the differentiating optimisation tool that brands rely on to stand out. The landscape is changing, TV ad views are declining in favour of digital, but the creative is falling behind,” commented Oli Marlow-Thomas, Ad-Lib’s founder and CEO.
“With Fog City Capital’s backing we’ll build on our success to date by taking our proposition to the US and driving further innovations in our technology to enable marketers to engage with consumers creatively in the ever evolving digital ad space”, added Marlow-Thomas.
Ravi Bhaskaran, Managing Partner at Fog City, added: “We were blown away by Ad-Lib’s technology and the rapid traction they are getting with large brands for whom the seamless integration of the creative and media buying processes in their advertising is a major pain point.
“We’re delighted to back Oli and his incredible team of creative and mar-tech experts in their ambitious plans to further disrupt this space.”