Emergent programmatic advertising firm engage:BDR raises cash to fund growth and expansion

Engage:BDR’s (ASX: EN1) chief executive officer Ted Dhanik is set to increase his holdings in the company by 1.7 million shares effective immediately, with his overall holdings to grow to 57.7 million shares – 19.99% of the total company share register.

Mr Dhanik has maintained 100% of his shareholdings since co-founding the company a decade ago and says that he intends to take the company to the next level via an incremental growth strategy that includes sequential additions to its growing catalogue of integrations to its proprietary programmatic platform.

“As a company, we have overcome several key challenges on both the technology and financial sides, to be where we are and to be able to offer the wide array of services we do today. The additional capital raised will help us advance our strategy and will put us in a great position to generate a strong flow of business and to maximise the commercial potential within our next-generation platform,” said Mr Dhanik.

“I’d like to thank the shareholders who have stood strong by our side us since the IPO, and the new shareholders we’re welcoming on board now for all of the momentum in these recent days,” he said.

Funds secured

Engage:BDR has turned to the market to raise additional capital to extend its growth and expansion within the programmatic advertising industry – an evolving online niche that seeks to improve upon delivering media distribution, ad-buying and brand marketing on a global scale.

Via a placement to professional and sophisticated investors, the advertising company said it had raised $702,784 through the issue of 25,099,423 new fully paid ordinary shares, with an issue price of $0.028 per share.

The capital raising is expected to conclude “over the coming days” and is likely to be wrapped by the end of this week.

According to engage:BDR, funds raised from the capital raising will be used to fund the payment of revenue generating publisher payments and to satisfy existing working capital requirements.

Ramping up market activity

Earlier this week, engage:BDR announced it had made a strong start to this year via a series of new integrations that are projected to extend the capability of its programmatic ad platform.

Mr Dhanik said engage:BDR had finally concluded the inclusion of ThirdPresence and AcuityAds onto its platform with a further set of integrations expected to be unveiled later this year.

According to Mr Dhanik, engage:BDR intends to integrate its cutting-edge technology to streamline the programmatic process and deliver better online ads. One of its core focal points is what’s known as “video pre-roll” ads – videos that are played before popular content is played on YouTube or a news website such as CNN.

The ad company has led a concerted drive to build up its own inventory by adding various kinds of ad partners into its ecosystem over the past year. It has added multiple platforms to its arsenal in a bid to appeal to as many different advertisers as possible.

Since inception, engage:BDR integrated over 160 digital ad companies into its own ecosystem (with around 80 added in 2018 alone) including the likes of Decibel, Instreamatic and Sonobi.

According to Mr Dhanik, engage:BDR’s technology also allows detailed tracking of previous campaigns and improves cost-effectiveness across the board, which in turn translates into better profit margins for the company.