A dynamic London ad-tech company has become the latest technology start-up to receive seed capital from Mercia Fund Management’s newest hybrid SEIS & EIS fund. wayve, a 360 degree advertising platform, has received a £300,000 seed investment which will be used to implement and extend its expansion strategy.
Founded by Jamie Evans-Parker, a leading computer science and digital marketing specialist, wayve provides an “end-to-end” solution to simplify advertising in the multi-platform era. The business is supported by ad tech heavyweights including: James Booth, CEO of Scoota and Founder of Tangozebra, which was sold to DoubleClick/Google; and Stuart Colman, International VP at AudienceScience and Founder of Colman Media and former COO of Switch Concepts.
wayve provides a unique solution to the issues of cross-platform advertising, allowing creative advertisements to be distributed seamlessly across multiple devices and screen sizes. The platform empowers creative agencies, publishers and media agencies to create, distribute and monitor campaigns, utilising its product suite that includes wayve.builder, wayve.trafficker and ad.aptive.
By offering a simplified media buying process, wayve allows effective multi-platform ad placements and audience monetisation, alongside the tools to develop engaging and creative HTML5 ads.
The platform is already in use by a number of leading global brands including The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal and News UK.
wayve’s suite of leading products include:
- wayve.builder, which converts static advertising assets into rich, animated content for use on mobile and desktop via an automated HTML5 conversion process and intuitive timeline-based editor;
- wayve.trafficker, which streamlines distribution of these assets across all devices and platforms, and integrates with third party tracking providers such as Google Analytics to procure real-time engagement tracking;
- ad.aptive, an IP protected technology, which enhances both of these products and enables content to be optimised autmoatically to all screen sizes and pixel resolutions.
Commenting on the investment, Jamie Evans-Parker, Founder and CEO of wayve, said:
“Mercia’s investment provides us with the opportunity to accelerate our go-to-market strategy and build our team, as the company begins to scale and branch out into the international market.
“We believe that wayve has the potential to streamline 360 degree advertising for creative agencies, publishers and media agencies in a way that is cost-effective, digitally enhanced and measurable in real-time.”
Joshua Levy, Investment Manager at Mercia Fund Management, commented:
“I have been extremely impressed by the services offered by wayve and I am excited to see how the company will progress following Mercia’s initial seed investment.
“wayve has already proved the importance of its service offering through its impressive client roster, and I am confident that this client base will increase as brands continue to look for an efficient way of enhancing their assets and engaging with their audience.”