UPDATED 12:00 EDT / FEBRUARY 04 2022

AI

Predictive ad-tracking startup SegmentStream raises $2.7M seed funding

SegmentStream Ltd. said today it has raised $2.7 million in seed funding to try to solve the headaches of online marketers struggling to find a way forward without the assistance of third-party cookies.

Today’s round was led by Fort Ross Ventures, with participation from OKS Group and a number of angel investors, including Liad Agmon of Dynamic Yield Inc. and Ragnar Sass, Martin Henk and Martin Tajur of Pipedrive Ltd.

U.K.-based SegmentStream believes it has found a solution to the problem of trying to stitch together online customer journeys and assess the success of digital marketing campaigns. Previously, most marketers would rely on the use of cookies, which are short text strings that third-party sites add to browsers in order to track users as they travel around the internet.

However, cookies have fallen foul of privacy and security concerns, and their use has since been severely curtailed, with Apple Inc.’s Safari browser and the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox blocking them by default. Even Google LLC, the world’s biggest beneficiary of cookies, has said it will discontinue the use of cookies in Chrome by next year.

SegmentStream co-founder and Chief Executive Constantine Yurevich said that without cookies, marketers can’t determine attribution and return on ad spend.

“It is technologically impossible to rely on the old cookie-based approach for the proper calculation of ROAS, since most advertising clicks don’t get the credit they deserve,” Yuervich said. “The clock is ticking for marketers to find a viable alternative to cookie-based ad tracking.”

SegmentStream is aiming to be that viable alternative with its novel technology, which works by applying machine learning algorithms to analyze first-party user behavior data that can be used to evaluate the incremental performance of marketing campaigns. This allows it to provide “Probabilistic Conversions,” or insights into the likely contribution of each traffic source to future sales.

SegmentStream’s method contrasts directly with existing cookieless attribution platforms, which work by reverse-engineering attribution from the time of conversion, attempting to go backwards to locate the source of that traffic. Rather, it focuses on “predictive attribution” that it says generates more valuable data for marketers.

The benefit is that information can be fed back into platforms such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads to help automate advertising campaign automation. So marketing teams can also gauge the value of channels and campaigns that don’t directly drive sales, the company explained.

It’s an approach that has won a number of fans, with SegmentStream claiming more than 100 customers globally, including some fairly big names such as Whirlpool Corp. subsidiary KitchenAid, Nestlé Nespresso S.A. and Freshly Cosmetics S.L.

SegmentStream, which has 30 employees spread across five countries, said today’s funding round will help it to double its headcount as it looks to expand the reach of its product.

“Digital advertising is undergoing massive changes, and we’re excited to partner with SegmentStream as they have the leadership and innovation needed to emerge as an industry leader,” said Fort Ross Ventures founder and Managing Partner Victor Orlovski.

Image: SegmentStream

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