Search intelligence platform Captify has announced that SFW Capital Partners, a US-based private equity firm focused on information and data-centric software businesses, has entered into a definitive agreement to take the majority investment in the company.
Further terms of the private transaction were not disclosed.
Existing investors, including management, will also be reinvesting into the company.
The current management team, led by co-founder and CEO Dominic Joseph, will continue to drive the company forward in its next phase of growth.
‘‘SFW shares our vision to be the search intelligence platform for the open web and their experience in scaling data and software companies is the expertise and backing that excites us as we continue to accelerate globally," Joseph says.
"Undoubtedly, SFW will bring their extensive growth experience to add to our board, unlocking the next chapter of growth and continued product innovation."
SFW Capital partner Omair Sarwar says unlike most adtech businesses, Captify's "unique, differentiated" data offerings were valuable to solve the needs of advertisers today.
“We believe that Captify is a truly differentiated business, operating at the intersection of the most explosive areas of digital advertising—cookieless, CTV and programmatic," Sarwar says.
"With its own first party dataset, unique proprietary technologies and advanced platform, it was an easy decision for SFW to back the company—given the significant market opportunity, particularly in the U.S. Captify has a talented leadership team in place and we’re excited to partner with them and accelerate the company’s growth.”
Captify has spent the last decade, since it was founded in London, building out its search intelligence platform for the open web.
The platform was built on the foundation of direct integrations with publishers and e-commerce data providers and does not rely on third-party cookies.
Today, brands such as Westpac, Disney, Unilever, Qantas, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Nestle, Amazon and Toyota use Captify’s dynamic audiences and real-time insights across its applications.
The company’s recent innovations include Search-Powered Contextual, as well as addressable and browser-based audience targeting powered by search.
Since launching, Captify has experienced significant growth through expansion into eight regions across North America, Europe and Australia, and despited the global pandemic delivered record revenue throughout 2020/21.
"It’s an incredibly exciting time to be entering a new era for the Captify business, being relatively fresh in to the Aussie market," Captify Australian general manager Krish Raja says.
"Since arriving here, we’ve had a wonderful welcome from brands, publishers and adtech partners alike who all see the value in our products. We’ve proved that Australia wants Captify.
"With this investment, we’re going to be able to grow faster to drive faster innovation of our product, as well as scaling our service levels to exceed expectation."
Over the past three years, that growth was driven by the hiring of some major industry heavyweights, including former TiVo CEO, founder of CNBC and MSNBC, media titan Tom Rogers as chairman, former Comcast TV executive Brendan Condon as global chief revenue officer and former CBS executive Fiona Davis as global chief operating officer.
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