Sep 29, 2022
We’re delighted to share that we’ve raised $15 million in our Series A funding round!
We’ve grown significantly over the past few years and we’re now set to deliver even more value to marketers, businesses, and agencies in 2023 and beyond.
Having scaled rapidly since founding, we’ve partnered with Smedvig Capital and an Angel fund of senior leaders in the AdTech space at companies such as Google and Warner. This global alliance will further accelerate our growth trajectory as we continue to expand our product, team, and goals for the future.
So what does all this mean for the market? Well, over the past few months we’ve been working hard to raise awareness about the scale of the ad fraud problem and how to address it, deliver comprehensive protection to more businesses, and unlock the true potential of optimising ad campaigns with clean data from validated users.
Our development roadmap will ultimately help our clients generate more conversions and revenue from every dollar they spend on platforms like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter and more.
Lunio was born out of a frustration with repeatedly paying for zero-value ad clicks.
$771bn is spent on online traffic acquisition each year, and the size of the market is growing by more than 10% YoY. But currently, 11% of this total spend is wasted on fake users.
This essentially means the performance metrics provided by paid marketing channels are always inflated due to invalid and fraudulent activity. But as long as ad campaigns deliver an ROI, most businesses chalk this recurring loss up to “the cost of doing business”.
But that shouldn’t be the case. And that’s why our founders Segev Hochberg, Neil Andrew, and Alex Winston set out to change things.
We first started growing Lunio (formerly PPC Protect) in 2018 and then took an initial investment of $150k in 2019. As things started to take off and brands began to realise the need for protection against fake ad traffic, a year later we took on a seed round of $2.8M.
Since then, things have progressed at breakneck speed. We now protect over 1000 businesses globally, covering over 10,000 individual advertising accounts and representing over 2500 users. And with our latest Series A investment, these numbers are set to grow rapidly over the coming months.
Our investors' trust in our vision really reinforces our position as leaders in our industry.
The rise of social media, increasing levels of automation, and the explosive proliferation of fake users and accounts means digital advertising has fundamentally changed. And our job is to help businesses adapt. So we’re incredibly thankful to be backed by a team of specialist B2B tech investors who understand the true potential of our solution:
It’s been a few years since we founded Lunio, but we feel like we’re just getting started.
As we move forward, and with this new round of funding, we’re more committed than ever to providing our clients with the best digital ad protection technology on the market. Which is reflected in the ongoing acceleration of our product development roadmap.
Given the sheer scale of global problems from fake users and invalid traffic, we also need to quickly scale our go-to-market team. This will enable us to let as many businesses as possible know about the growing risks that exist within the paid media landscape and how to mitigate them, regardless of whether they become clients of ours or not.
Continually responding to feedback, providing hands-on support when needed, and making the product developments our clients want to see is what has kept us at the very top of our industry thus far. And we plan to keep it that way. So we’ve made plans to build out our Customer Success team to continue to help our clients generate more revenue from their performance marketing budgets. Driven by a no-nonsense philosophy, our aim is to consistently deliver a significant ROI as soon as possible.
We are and always have been a capital-efficient business, and we’ll continue to grow the company responsibly over the coming months.
Our overarching mission is to make the internet a cleaner, safer, and more reliable place for everyone trying to grow their business.
And while that starts with protecting our clients from fake clicks and traffic, we aren’t stopping there. We see a major opportunity to provide valuable commercial insights through the private, first-party data we analyse as part of our protection process.
Ad networks have held all the cards for too long. Hidden behind pretty-looking dashboards lies a ton of data which advertisers currently have no access to. In the near future, our intention is to help our clients crack open these ‘black boxes’ and extract additional value from their ad spend by providing access to traffic and audience insights they otherwise wouldn’t have.
This data can then be used to further optimise campaign audience targeting on positive buying signals from real customers demonstrating high purchase intent.
We’re truly excited by the opportunities that lie ahead for our clients and partners. Yes, we have big aspirations, but we also have the team, the support, and the passion to get it done.
You can check out our official press release announcing the investment here.
If you’re interested in speaking to us about joining our team, please visit our Careers Page, or contact us directly us at hello@lunio.ai
Since 1996 Smedvig Capital has partnered with and helped scale over 75 companies. Leading Series A/B rounds, they’re passionate about finding and investing in the best, fast-growing B2B businesses across the UK, Nordics, and the Netherlands. They work closely with a small number of high-quality teams and build strong relationships with founders. They’re also not afraid to roll up their sleeves and be there for their portfolio when they are needed through the inevitable ups and downs of growing a business. They’re a flexible source of capital supporting and accelerating ambition with a long-term view, understanding that great things can take time.
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