Dive Brief:
- Tech firm Drawbridge raked in $25 million in a Series C round funded by Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Northgate Capital.
- According to the company, it will spend the new cash injection on expanding beyond ad tech.
- Drawbridge’s core technology is identifying individuals across multiple screens.
Dive Insight:
Drawbridge's goal to move past ad tech comes at a time when the mar- and ad tech landscape is evolving quickly. The current martech ecosystem is going through a flattening in many ways across email and marketing automation, programmatic ad buys and full integration into CRM software. It’s a marketplace that marketers are increasingly tasked with researching and fulfilling corporate tech needs. And it's an area that is ripe for M&A activity.
"The opportunity that Drawbridge is going after is: How do we use this fundamental asset to power so many different services? That’s where our investment is going, into identifying these categories. We’re going to invest in it from a product perspective and a sales perspective," Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Drawbridge founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
The current ad tech sector is a trove of data. However, Sivaramakrishnan told Ad Exchanger that the wealth of data isn't being used to it's fullest potential.
"The future will be about leveraging that data to power the broader economy. Mar tech, customer experience, site optimization, fighting fraud – ad tech is not the only application of an identity capability," she explained to Ad Exchanger.
Though Drawbridge's eye is currently on growth rather than profit, to justify its market cap, Drawbridge will have to bring its tracking capabilities to more areas and seamlessly integrate that into enterprise tech stacks.