Social video advertising platform Unruly secured $25m in series A financing on Wednesday from the Business Growth Fund (BGF), the fund set up by five major UK-based banking groups, and venture capital firms Amadeus Capital Partners and Van den Ende & Deitmers.
The funding is being touted as the largest ever obtained by a private social video company and will be used to globally expand the operations of Unruly, which is headquartered in the UK with offices in seven countries.
Founded in 2006 and profitable since 2009, Unruly uses a technology it refers to as RAMP (Real-time Amplification and Measurement Platform) to deliver, track and audit social video campaigns on behalf of brands and advertising agencies. Past achievements include co-ordinating memorable social video campaigns for Old Spice, Coca Cola, Evian and T-Mobile.
Marion Bernard, regional director of BGF, said: "In a short space of time, Unruly has played a major role in the explosive growth of social video and this investment gives it additional firepower. We look forward to working with the company and our co-investors to take advantage of the very significant global expansion opportunities. BGF is working in partnership with other investors to expand the pool of investment capital to growing and ambitious UK companies as a key part of developing the entrepreneurial economy."
In addition to advertising, Unruly operates the Viral Video Chart, a chart compiling the most shared videos across social media which is syndicated to a range of media outlets including US-based news site The Huffington Post, UK-based newspaper The Guardian and Germany-based newspaper Die Welt.
The funding announcement came just one day after Unruly was dragged into a Google-related controversy after sponsoring a blogger to publish a video promoting Google’s Chrome web browser, thereby contravening Google’s own rules concerning paid links.