AdTech startup Symbiosys has just secured $9 million in its Series A funding round, with the primary backing coming from Fuse, a prominent venture capital firm based in the Seattle region.
The two-year-old company is making a name for itself by revolutionizing the collaboration dynamics between retailers and product brands in the $45 billion retail media market.
In a strategic move to capitalize on the industry's growth, fueled in part by the success of Amazon's own ad business, Symbiosys carved its own niche by facilitating off-site advertising for retailers.
These ads find a home on prominent platforms like Google and Instagram, creating new avenues for revenue generation.
Symbiosys' Strategy Explained
Symbiosys' approach lies in optimizing the synergy between retailers and brands in their performance marketing efforts.
By leveraging first-party measurement data, the startup aims to provide brands with an effective means of driving traffic to retailer websites.
Simultaneously, Symbiosys assists retailers in expanding their retail media networks, enhancing their overall advertising capabilities.
At the center of Symbiosys's offerings are real-time reporting and analytics, providing valuable insights into the performance of advertising campaigns.
What sets the Washington-based company apart is its innovative collaborative bidding technology, enabling retailers and brands to bid collectively for off-site product ad campaigns.
This approach is spearheaded by CEO Bashar Kachachi, a former advertising leader with a decade of experience at Google and Microsoft working on ad-related products. "We're doing something very novel," Kachachi explained.
Symbiosys has quickly garnered a wide variety of major retailers as its clients.
The team is comprised of seasoned professionals, including President John Roswech, formerly Chief Revenue Officer at Marchex and HookLogic, and engineering leader Dan Cooke, previously associated with Criteo, HookLogic and WorldQuant.
Having raised a total of $11.5 million to date, Symbiosys' Series A funding round also saw investments from industry giants like HookLogic co-founder Jonathan Opdyke and Flywheel Digital co-founder Patrick Miller, along with individual angel investor Scott Friend, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures.