French startup TVTY raised $4.5 million from Partech Ventures, 360 Capital Partners and business angels. This is yet another sign that French companies’ efforts to advertise technology have been doing very well.
TVTY provides an API for advertising companies to bridge the gap between TV campaigns or events and web ads. In other words, if you want to launch an advertising campaign on an ad network, video pre-roll ads, search ads and more, you can time the launch depending on what’s happening on the TV. For example, if you’re watching a YouTube video during a commercial break, you won’t avoid this new McDonald’s campaign because you will see it a pre-roll video ad for McDonald’s anyway.
To do this, the company monitors hundreds of TV channels, has an ad database in order to detect when a particular ad is playing in just a fraction of a second. You can even track ads from competitors. When a competing ad is playing on the TV, you can retaliate by showing your ads on the web.
This is already a powerful tool, but the startup plans to go one step further. Soon, the company will also track events. It would be particularly effective for live events, such as World Cup goals or the Academy Awards. Imagine that your favorite team scores a goal, advertisers can adapt their campaigns in real time to become more engaging.
The startup will soon open an office in the U.S. to get more American advertisers in the coming months. So far, the company has raised $6.80 million.
While many companies compete on targeting, retargeting and personal data, TVTY is taking an interesting approach by focusing on big events that interest the masses. In addition to that, as the company monitors hundreds of channels, it can leverage all this data to become an expert when it comes to TV campaigns.