Earlier this month, the adtech firm Kevel announced that it had raised $23 million in a Series C round of funding to help retailers set up and run advertising businesses.
Fourteen-year-old Kevel, formerly known as Adzerk, sells software that brands, including Klarna and Delivery Hero, pay a monthly fee for to manage advertising businesses on e-commerce websites.
Kevel’s products help retailers sell search ads on e-commerce websites, provide an ad server to manage and place ads, and give access to an audience tool that collects retailers’ first-party data. Kevel also pitches a product called a retail media cloud that groups all of its products together.
Kevel founder and CEO James Avery said the company will use the money to hire and invest in sales and marketing. He said the company had previously put investment into research and development and is now focused on pushing the company’s name and product in the market. Kevel has also hired Puja Rios, the former Frame.io chief revenue officer, as president and chief operating officer.
“We’ve built this technology and invested — now it’s time to scale in sales and marketing,” Avery said. “We feel like it’s time to go hard in the market.”
Retail media is surging and will make $130 billion globally this year, according to Morgan Stanley, as retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart invest in advertising to offset retail’s low margins. Kevel competes with a growing number of adtech firms that help retailers stand up ad businesses, like Criteo, Epsilon, and Microsoft.
Avery said Kevel wants to differentiate itself by offering lower, monthly fees. Kevel doesn’t sell ads, which Avery said the firm benefits from as more retailers like Target’s Roundel take their ad businesses in-house. Kevel is also only focused on onsite formats — where most of retail media budgets are spent.
Kevel is also working with digital advertising group the Interactive Advertising Bureau to develop standards that would allow advertisers to buy search ads across multiple retailers at once through adtech firms. Avery said he hopes to have a proof of concept for the standards within six months.
Fulcrum Equity Partners led the round of funding while Godwin Capital Group, Iberis Capital, Dunnhumby Ventures, and Commerce Ventures also participated. Kevel has raised a total of $40 million.
Here are the main slides from Kevel’s pitch deck to investors.
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