Advertising
See the pitch deck that helped audio ads firm AudioMob raise $14 million from investors including Makers Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Google
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- In-game audio advertising firm AudioMob has raised a $14 million Series A round.
- Investors included Makers Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia’s Scout Program, and Google.
- See the key slides from the pitch deck AudioMob used to convince investors to back its latest round of funding.
UK-based adtech firm AudioMob said Tuesday it has raised a $14 million Series A round, which it plans to use to expand its team and broaden its offering beyond ads.
The company’s latest investment round, at a valuation of $110 million, brings its total funding to $16 million. Makers Fund and Lightspeed Venture Partners were the lead investors, while Sequoia’s Scout Program and Google also participated.
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Founded in 2020, AudioMob specializes in offering audio ads that appear in mobile games. Its advertiser clients have included major music labels like Warner Music Group and Universal Music, plus brands such as Intel, Pampers, and Jeep.
AudioMob Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Wilfrid Obeng said its ads are “non-intrusive” because they don’t interrupt the gameplay, the ads only play if a user’s device is already set to a certain volume, and they don’t rely on hypertargeted tracking techniques.
Christian Facey, AudioMob cofounder and CEO, said the company plans to use the new funding to expand its headcount, including opening an office in the US. AudioMob currently employs 10 full-time staffers and five contracts, which it plans to increase to around 35 by mid-2022.
AudioMob is also exploring new areas beyond advertising, such as streaming music into games and voice synthesis, where a human voice can be artificially produced using a short clip of a recording and machine learning.
Facey declined to comment on the company’s financial performance, but said that AudioMob averaged year-over-year revenue growth of 157% in each of the first two quarters of this year and that it is currently profitable.
“I want us to be seen as an exceptional company that’s found the balance between exponential growth and a good culture,” Facey said.
Check out the key slides from AudioMob’s Series A investor deck below.
AudioMob was founded in London in 2020 and specializes in serving audio ads within mobile games.
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AudioMob’s cofounders met while working together at Google’s Dublin headquarters. The company took place in last year’s Google for Startups program and has received investment from the search giant.
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“In-game monetization is broken,” said Facey, who added that most games derive revenue through interruptive video ads that block the gameplay.
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AudioMob instead offers technology to let advertisers run what it deems to be “non-intrusive” audio ads within games.
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Game developers can choose to insert specially-created AudioMob ad slots into their apps.
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Alternatively, AudioMob can convert their existing ad slots into audio ones.
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AudioMob defines the total addressable market for its products as $39 billion. Facey said AudioMob forecasts that in three years, it could generate annual revenue of $247 million, listed here as its “serviceable obtainable market,” or SOM.
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AudioMob says it has achieved “zero-percent churn” among its music clients.
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Its music clients include four of the biggest labels.
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Other advertiser clients have included KitKat, Pampers, Intel, and Jeep.
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AudioMob views its competitor set as platforms like Spotify and YouTube and adtech firms like PubMatic and InMobi.
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AudioMob points investors pondering its potential valuation to a list of major adtech acquisitions. Those include AT&T acquiring AppNexus for $1.5 billion in 2018, Google picking up MoPub for $750 million in 2009, and Twitter buying MoPub for $350 million in 2013. (Twitter in October announced a deal to sell MoPub to adtech and gaming company AppLovin for $1.05 billion.)
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