Boston-based digital advertising startup ViralGains Inc. announced Thursday it raised a $13.5 million Series B round led by a pair of Chicago venture capital firms.
First Analysis and Origin Ventures joined previous investors like Stage 1 Ventures, Pallasite Ventures and LaunchCapital to invest $10 million in equity capital. The rest of the round comes in the form of debt from Square 1 Bank.
Founded in 2012, ViralGain has been growing quickly — adding more than 100 customers in the first half of 2017 — in a digital ad marketing increasingly dominated by Facebook and Google.
CEO Tod Loofbourrow has attributed ViralGains' traction to its unique focus on finding "engaged" consumers. Brands only pay ViralGains when someone on the internet has watched their video ad for at least 30 seconds, rather than for a total number of views, the way much online advertising is measured.
"Because consumers are watching through to the end because they’re interested in (the videos), they’re likely to interact with the brands afterwords,” Loofbourrow said in an interview in May about the startup's growth. “We get the engagement buy. Guys like Facebook get the impressions buy.”
Loofourrow joined ViralGains in early 2015 after a stint as an entrepreneur-in-residence at MIT and, before that, heading up iRobot's health care robotics unit from 2009 to 2011.
ViralGains raised a $12.3 million Series A investment round in early 2016 and this spring moved into a 6,000-square-foot space in a building at Rowes Wharf in downtown Boston. The company also opened offices in Detroit and San Francisco and has about 60 employees total.
