Watching That, the leading revenue intelligence platform for the OTT industry, has secured late seed funding from FirstPartyCapital, to help expand its customer base of broadcasters and OTT video providers across the globe. The funding will help Watching That invest in its technical team, accelerate global expansion, and expand its marketing efforts.
Watching That collects data from every ad and every video view across every device in near real time, allowing customers to monitor, control, troubleshoot and optimise all corners of their OTT revenue operations with a level of accuracy that has not previously been possible.
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The OTT advertising market is in a period of sharp growth, especially for the Connected TV (CTV) sector which has seen a 22% rise in ad revenues year-over-year according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). And it is expected that “US AVOD (ad-supported Video-on-Demand) revenues will triple between 2020 and 2026 to USD$31bn (£22.7bn),” according to Simon Murray, who is principal analyst at Digital TV Research. Meanwhile, the complexity of OTT video advertising is increasing, with over 50% now traded programmatically, according to IAB Europe.
OTT providers are faced with a fast-evolving and highly complex technology and advertising landscape as audiences shift en masse to the new way of consuming their favourite TV channels, shows and movies. To remain competitive, media and entertainment companies must adapt by learning to understand their data better and leveraging the insights contained within. Watching That empowers its customers to improve access and interpretation of their data to deliver better viewing experiences, manage their advertising inventory more effectively, grow the revenue generated from their viewership, and control costs.
The late seed funding has been led by FirstPartyCapital, an angel-backed VC fund that includes hundreds of senior execs globally, across the digital media and marketing ecosystem. The fund was founded in December 2020 by Rich Ashton, a specialist in financing European digital media and ad tech businesses, with 60 transactions completed to date, Kevin Flood, who is CEO of PowerLinks and co-chair of the IAB Data Transparency Standards, and Ciaran O’Kane, who is CEO of WireCorp, which owns ExchangeWire. FirstPartyCapital is unique in ad tech as it supports companies with its extensive sector expertise as well as funding.
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“Watching That stood out for us because they solve a specific problem that is becoming increasingly important to broadcasters and OTT video providers,” said Rich Ashton, Managing Partner at FirstPartyCapital. “Cameron and his team are technically very highly skilled and laser-focused on addressing, and anticipating, their customers’ needs. They have scaled well organically and have a great customer list and pipeline. We’re really excited to be supporting them in the next phase of their growth.”
Watching That was founded in 2016 by Cameron Church, who previously worked for online media specialists Brightcove and Rightster (now Brave Bison). He also founded a highly successful boutique management consultancy focused on solving the online video business puzzle.
“This is a major investment milestone for Watching That as it secures our plans to drive the business forward faster at what is a crucial point for the industry,” said Cameron Church, CEO & Founder at Watching That. “FirstPartyCapital’s commitment to our growth is a big validation of our proposition because they understand the challenges and opportunities that our customers face. We really wanted a smart investment partner that would help us achieve our goals, and that’s what we have. This is an exciting time for Watching That and we already have several major broadcaster customers in a launch phase. I can’t wait to push on from here.”
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