Emerging as one of the leaders for digital advertising platforms aimed at the younger set, SuperAwesome has managed to come a long way in the past year – and it’s aiming even better with a recent fundraising round.
TechCrunch has reported that the U.K. based company has managed to raise $7 million through a Series A funding, and will use the money to “grow faster and reach more territories,” according to founder Dylan Collins.
This expansion includes both more hirings in the United States, as well as Southeast Asia. Said Collins, “We’re hiring in the U.S., U.K., Asia and in several partnership conversations for specific regions.”
This funding was put together by IBIS MTM, Twenty Ten Capital and Sandbox and Co., along with participating partners like Hoxton Ventures.
It’s just the latest bit of good news for the company, which has managed to push its valuation 4.5 times since its previous seed round last year. “When we started SuperAwesome, the objective was always to become the global digital kids marketing platform,” says Collins. “Nobody has done this (most of the major media companies are concentrated in one or two territories) and the faster we build out this global kid-safe infrastructure to connect brands with content, the larger we grow this market.”
The company has more than a quarter of a billion young viewers for an audience, as well as a “compliance” platform that works considerably well, using cloud-based tools for Kids Web Services (KWS) to assure safety for parents, while at the same time producing content with the help of brands like Hasbro, Mattel and Lego.
Collins also discussed profit for the site, which will either exceed expectations or break even. “This year, we’ll drive tens of millions of advertising dollars into the kids digital content ecosystem with annual growth of 4-5x and we’ve got a clear route to revenues of $100 million + over the next couple of years,” he said. “By virtue of existing we’re materially increasing the size (and safety) of the digital kids market so by any analysis, our value comes from continuing to grow fast.”
SuperAwesome has made a number of acquisitions to continue its success, including Spain’s Ad4kids, and the sales and ad teams for kids’ virtual world Bin Weevils. But Collins insists it’s still a personal process. “All of our acquisitions have been for people, rather than technology (because of the very specific compliance needs, all of our products are built by our internal engineering team) so we continue to look at opportunities when they arise,” says Collins. “The kids market is extremely tough to scale up in so if any startup is interested in a strategic conversation, we’d be happy to have a chat.”
More information on this fund-raising can be found here.
