Founded in 2019, iion centralises game inventory for advertisers across all gaming environments and offers publishers access to brand budgets and various monetisation opportunities. Its flagship product, immersion, delivers a comprehensive self-serve platform for creating, launching, and managing ad campaigns, featuring real-time analytics and integrated measurement tools.
TEN13.vc, a global network-driven venture capital firm, led the successful funding round and is joined by co-investors Archangel and PixCapital. Advisors Pieter Kooyman, CEO of Half Moon Studios and former Chief Advertising Officer at game publisher Miniclip SA, and Ionut Ciobotaru, co-CEO of Verve Group and Chief Product Officer of MGI, bring extensive experience in digital advertising, tech, and gaming.
iion has built a global footprint over the past five years without external funding. This funding round marks a significant milestone as the company seeks to expand its reach and impact. The seed capital will fuel the growth of the game advertising platform, allowing iion to expand its team, accelerate its market penetration into the US and EU regions, and bolster its game publisher efforts in China.
Additionally, the investment will enhance iion’s product roadmap, focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) automation to empower seamless advertising across the entire gaming ecosystem. This strategic move positions the global game technology company for significant growth.
A Seamless Solution for End-to-End Game Advertising
“Despite gaming having a large global and highly attentive audience of over 3.4 billion, brands have been slow to enter the space as there was no easy way to activate gaming campaigns in one place,” explains iion co-founder Sanjaya Molligoda.
“We recognised the opportunity for a solution that overcame the common industry challenges in a seamless way that allows for easy activation via a self-serve game ad platform,” concludes Molligoda.
This realisation in 2019 prompted co-founders Sanjaya Molligoda, Wout van Damme, and Giuseppe Martoriello to develop immersiion, the first-of-its-kind game advertising platform for brands and agencies.
iion’s Self-Serve immersiion Platform
iion’s immersiion platform addresses industry challenges such as fragmentation, measurement, creative, and scalability. It provides a central self-serve ‘control centre’ for brands and agencies, combining campaign management, contextual and audience targeting, creative builder, superior reporting, and measurement tools (including brand lift studies and attention metrics) all in one platform.
iion co-founder Giuseppe Martoriello adds, “Our platform addresses the need for robust measurement. It allows in-depth measurement of attention metrics and brand lift studies to ensure brands accurately assess campaign effectiveness and impact on brand health.”
The funds raised will enable iion to further its global expansion efforts, pushing forward the power of gaming as the next big media channel.
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Unified Vision: Elevating Gaming as an Essential Media Channel
iion investors and advisors share the company’s vision to elevate game advertising into an essential (and easily accessible) media channel for brands. By consolidating game media, enhancing measurement capabilities, and offering robust creative tools, iion’s platform boosts efficiency for global marketing teams.
TEN13’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Stew Glynn, highlights what stood out about the innovative platform-led start-up: “iion has developed a proprietary technology platform which intersects adtech and gaming, and solves real challenges faced by brands, advertisers, and game publishers.”
“We believe in iion’s potential to build the centralised platform and are proud to have led their first funding round and are excited for the significant leap ahead.“
“iion’s co-founders have been at the forefront of digital and programmatic advertising since 2009. We frequently encounter adtech startups; this team stood out due to their significant progress with reputable publishers, agencies and DSPs,” concluded Glynn.
Wout van Damme from iion adds, “We are thrilled about entering iion’s next growth stage. We have worked together as a founding team for 20 years, building and bootstrapping various programmatic media businesses.”
“We’ve seen the game advertising industry’s evolution first-hand and have never been more excited about the opportunity to elevate gaming as an essential channel for brands.”
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