13 adtech startups that raised millions in 2023 despite a tough fundraising environment

Still, companies successfully raised money. Some did so by pitching solutions to big challenges like the death of third-party cookies and measuring digital ads. Others built solutions that could bring digital advertising to relatively new channels, like video games.

Here are the pitch decks that 13 advertising and marketing tech companies used to raise money in 2023, listed in alphabetical order.

• Publisher tech firm Aditude raised $15 million from Volition Capital. The firm sells software that help publishers manage their ad sales, and used the money to grow its 15-person staff.

• Anzu, an adtech firm that places ads in video games, raised a $48 million Series B round of funding led by Emmis Corp. Advertisers use Anzu’s tools to serve ads in video games, without interrupting gameplay. The company boasts that it can engage Gen Z consumers that can be difficult to find.

• Barometer, a firm that susses out brand-safety issues in podcasts, raised $2.5 million in May in a seed round led by Knoll Ventures. Barometer audits more than 10,000 podcasts to create a brand-safety score for advertisers. The firm also works with adtech companies to target ads using its data.

• Capsule, an AI-video startup, raised $4.75 million in seed funding led by Bloomberg Beta and Array Ventures. The firm’s technology helps big brands like Snowflake and Google create video assets using automatic speech recognition and machine learning technology.

• Music startup Freshsound raised $2.2 million in seed funding from Zenith Venture Capital and Aligned Ventures. The startup’s technology helps brands use licensed music for ads and marketing. 

• Identity management company Lockr raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding from investors like Mozilla Ventures. Lockr provides identity and email tools for publishers to collect data as well as a consumer-facing email product.

• Adtech firm Qortex raised $6 million from GFT Ventures. The company’s offerings help advertisers target streaming TV ads using AI. The firm’s technology deciphers what happens in a video frame-by-frame to help advertisers understand the content that they’re advertising alongside. 

• AI product placement firm Rembrand raised $8 million from investors including Greycroft and UTA. The firm provides a platform that lets advertisers place digital products in videos. This is more efficient than doing traditional product placement, which requires a physical product to be in the video, and it’s also more efficient than inserting products digitally in post-production.

• Marketing tech firm Simon Data raised $54 million in a Series D round of funding led by Australian financial group Macquarie Capital. Simon Data sells a customer data platform that marketers use to organize their data in a central location.

• Sincera, a firm that uses metadata to help adtech firms improve their products and services, raised $4.2 million in a seed round in October. The company charges adtech companies a monthly fee for access to its database that lists which vendors advertisers work with. The round of funding was led by NextView Ventures.

• Scope3, a firm that helps the ad industry measure carbon emissions, raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Alphabet’s GV. Scope3 plans to use the funds to staff up in Europe and expand teams in areas like engineering and policy.

• SuperScale helps video game companies monetize their libraries of content. In June, the firm raised $5.4 million in a Series A round of funding led by Venture to Future Fund. The technology is used by video game companies to analyze how much revenue they could get from turning on selling ads or digital goods in video games.

• Telly, an ad-supported TV startup, raised a seed round in May. Founder Ilya Pozin declined to say how much the company has raised but said Telly is valued at nine figures. Telly gives consumers a free TV in exchange for their personal data.