UK-based Lunio is ready to take on click fraud and has just raised €15 million in a Series A funding round. The startup is helping marketing teams get more accurate insights on their campaigns and defeat invalid web traffic.
For any marketing team, having accurate data is a fundamental part of analyzing and designing campaigns – especially when it comes to advertising. With tight budgets and big targets to meet, marketing teams need to have accurate and clear insights over their campaigns – in order to justify spending and maximize their plans.
At the moment, marketing teams are being hit with a big challenge to overcome- bots and invalid traffic across digital advertising. It’s on the increase and draining marketing budgets.
Click fraud prevention company, Lunio, is on a mission to help digital marketers maximize their advertising budgets by identifying and excluding fake and invalid web traffic arriving from different traffic acquisition channels. The startup has just got a new investment to arm the mission.
Funding details
This €15 million Series A round was led by London and Stavanger-based venture capital fund Smedvig Capital. It also saw participation from senior leaders in the advertising-technology space from companies including Google and Warner.
The investment will be used to help Lunio accelerate the development of its technology while supporting further expansion into the EMEA and North American markets.
Neil Andrew, CEO and Founder of Lunio: “To have raised the largest Series A round in the digital ad fraud space to date is a strong validation of the fraud prevention platform we have developed and its success. This funding allows us to open up significant opportunities for Lunio to gain market share and scale.”
Preventing fraud at the source
Founded in 2018, the UK-based team offers a money-saving tool to help marketers regain control over their digital advertising budgets. By using a combination of big data and cybersecurity best practices to identify and block fraudulent and invalid traffic at the source, Lunio helps clients improve their return on ad spend across digital channels.
Fake and fraudulent ad traffic is an infamous problem across the digital advertising space, with global losses from ad fraud totalling $35 billion in 2020 alone. Invalid traffic inflates advertising performance measurements, resulting in the misidentification of customers and inaccurate marketing insights.
Digital advertising is a growing market – expected to hit the trillion-dollar mark by 2025. Yet 36% of display ad clicks are deemed fraudulent and invalid (according to Lunio). The sheer scale of wasted spend is spiralling, and it is expected to keep going in that trajectory.
Lunio uses a combination of data analysis and cyber security techniques to catch and block fake clicks at the source. As a result, markets can overcome invalid web traffic and gain more control over their campaign budgets.
The platform provides coverage for more than 25 ad networks including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Bing, Yandex, TikTok, and Snapchat, with support for non-paid and affiliate channels coming soon.
Smedvig Capital Partner Joe Knowles: “Lunio is quickly becoming a leading player in the business-critical digital ad fraud space. We were extremely impressed with the rapid growth the Lunio team has achieved and in particular the outstanding capital efficiency the business has displayed during this hyper-growth phase. It’s rare to come across a company that not only shows such strong growth and fundamentals, but has additional potential for growth in every market segment and every industry like Lunio has. We’re excited to partner with them on this journey moving forwards.”
