Engage:BDR boosts cash balance, onboards ad tech company Media.net

Engage:BDR (ASX: EN1) closed out the December 2020 quarter with a higher cash balance of $3.14 million compared to $2.43 million in the previous corresponding period, while starting the new year with global major ad tech company Media.net as a new programmatic partner.

Cash reserves were boosted by a share purchase plan and placement which was held late last year and raised $3.24 million.

The capital raising enable Engage:BDR to pay off all outstanding invoices it had accrued during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as reducing its Alto ZCS facility to US$59,000. Engage:BDR is looking to pay down this facility entirely within the coming weeks.

As part of its strategy to boost cash reserves, Engage:BDR reduced cash burn, with the company noting during calendar year 2020 it had “significantly” cut staff costs and other recurring expenses.

For the December 2020 quarter, Engage:BDR reported almost $3.2 million in cash receipts from customers, with almost $15 million received for CY 2020.

Underpinning the CY 2020 result was a record first half, despite COVID-19 impacts.

Revenue for the 1H 2020 was $9.04 million and was shored up by the March 2020 quarter, where $2 million in revenue was generated in the month of March alone.

Lucrative connected TV advertising market

During 2H 2020, the company focused on the “booming” connected TV (CTV) advertising sector, which is claims is “highly lucrative”.

In November alone, Engage:BDR signed on five new CTV programmatic customers.

The new customers include ad buyers LoopMe, Sonobi, and AdMixer alongside programmatic publisher VRTCAL.

Revenue impact from these new customers will be revealed in “due course”.

“CTV programmatic advertising revenue is rapidly scalable and, therefore, will be the primary focus of the board in 2021,” Engage:BDR stated.

Meda.net programmatic partnership

Meanwhile, Engage:BDR has kicked-off 2021 with addition of  global advertising company Media.net which inked a real-time bidding agreement with the company.

Using Engage:BDR’s programmatic ad exchange, Media.net will be able to incrementally monetise its advertising inventory across all device types.

Engage:BDR anticipates incremental revenue from Media.net’s exclusive access to streaming video publishers and their ad inventories.

This includes marquee publishers such as Ted.com (Ted Talks), Forbes, WebMD, Reuters and Elle.

According to Engage:BDR, Media.net has one of the most comprehensive portfolios of advertising technology and manages ad supply over 500,0000 websites.

Additionally, its platform and products are licenced by some of the largest publishers, ad networks and other ad tech companies worldwide.