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LA TechWatch

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Advertising

Trust Raises $9M for its Corporate Card and Community Focused on Maximizing Advertising Spend

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The digital ad spending market in the US is expected to exceed $190B in 2021. Businesses need to embrace the online ad revolution and be willing to adapt as the paid marketing environment is constantly evolving. The days of setting up a simple Facebook campaign and hoping for returns are no longer viable. Trust is a corporate card and community focused on optimizing advertising spend. The card, which has no annual fee, offers flexible payment terms and increased spending limits while the community puts data front and center, allowing businesses to really understand their marketing spend and the platforms that they are spending on through dedicated support and curated expert resources. With Trust, marketers are able to leverage scale to ensure that they are able to compete with larger advertisers from an informed standpoint to drive growth. Founded in 2019, the company recently launched with support for campaigns on Snap, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Google, Apple, Amazon, Hulu, Instagram, Youtube, et al. LA TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO James Borow to learn more about how the founding team’s experience at Snap led to the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, and recent round of funding from Lerer Hippeau, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, and Upper90.

Adway Raises $6M for its Mobility Based Ad Platform That Turns Any Vehicle Into an Ad Unit

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Brands and marketers are always looking for new and innovative ways to reach target audiences. The convergence of technology and mobility solutions like rideshares has enabled a new wave of ad units. For example, taxis for several years have had ads in cars and on top of vehicles, which now have become digitized from analog. This LA startup takes it one step further. Adway is a digital advertising platform that uses proprietary projection technology to display ads on the side of any vehicle without any major modifications. The projectors are affixed to a vehicle’s mirrors and ad buyers can purchase slots based on geography in real-time, enabling sophisticated targeting. The platform also tracks the number of cellular devices in and around the vehicles through Bluetooth to provide measured reach metrics. Adway drivers are given a share of the advertising revenue based on the number of hours they drive. LA TechWatch caught up with CEO Sasha Krylov to learn more about how the idea for the business came to fruition, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding from investors that include Upfront Ventures, Revel Partners, Watertower Ventures, and Inflection Capital.

Brybe Raises $1.3M for its Marketplace That Connects Influencers and Brands With Transparency Every Step of the Way

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Influencer marketing has grown to be a $13.8B industry annually according to one estimate; nearly doubling in size every two years. Despite the massive popularity, there is still a lack of transparency, fraud, payment friction, and lack of metrics that plague portions of the industry.  Brybe is a self-service marketplace that connects brands and influencers built to be transparent and easy-to-use every step of the way both for brands and influencers.  As the types of influencers vary greatly, the platform focuses on the mid-tier and lower influencers whose needs are often overlooked by larger platforms or those larger platforms that come in at inaccessible pricing.  For brands, as influencer marketing gets more specialized, Brybe gives the option to work with a few smaller influencers that have loyal followings that generate a better return on investment than working with mega influencers.  The platform handles payment, deployment, and analytics in an easy-to-use intuitive centralized location. LA TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Igor Fedenkoff to learn more about the inspiration for the platform, the company’s future plans, experience moving remote during the pandemic, recent round of funding, and much, much more.

Centerfield is the Automated End-to-End Customer Acquisition Platform for the Biggest Brands

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Jason Cohen, an ex-New Yorker sold his previous business, a performance-based marketing agency, and linked up with his cofounder, who had also recently sold his business. The duo launched Centerfield to bring technology-focused solutions to performance-based marketing. The company now automates end-to-end customer acquisition for brands, powering over 2M individual sales per year. Cohen shares some more insight into the state of acquisition and marketing, the company’s future plans, and impressive traction.

New Narratives and the Future of Storytelling

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Think of books, radio, film, and television: audiences had no choice but to sit back and read, watch, or listen, with no role to play in the narrative, no opportunity to fully engage all the senses.
Then the Internet arrived—the first two-way mass medium in history—and with it, people suddenly had the ability to engage with content, to share it and give feedback. This ushered in the new wave of social media, where people could not only comment on and share content but also create their own.