• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 9, 2024

ID5 has closed a $20 million Series B funding round, adding to an existing $7 million since the company’s inception in 2017.

“Identity is the ability to target, optimize and measure,” says Mathieu Roche, ID5 CEO and co-founder. “This is the trifecta ... that advertisers want everywhere they invest. All of that relies on the ability to recognize people and devices, using the intelligence and identity within the constraints of privacy regulations.”

TransUnion and Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4S Ventures contributed significantly to the funding round, but exact numbers were not provided.

The two will join existing investors Progress Ventures, Seventure Partners, 360 Capital Partners, Axio, and Aperiam Ventures to support ID5 in growing its privacy-first advertising identity service.

"Sanja Partalo and her colleagues have been closely watching the identity space over the past year,” Martin Sorrell, chairman of the board of directors of S4 Capital, wrote in an email to Media Daily News. “It has become apparent that ID5 was a leading contender following the deprecation of third-party cookies." 

Sorrell wrote that ID5’s technology provides marketers with the infrastructure needed to optimize ROI, whilst prioritizing data privacy. As the most widely adopted identity solution, S4S Ventures anticipate ID5's continued success on the web and its expansion into emerging advertising channels.

Partalo, co-founder and managing partner of S4S Ventures, and Michael Schoen, executive vice president and head of TruAudience marketing solutions at TransUnion, join the ID5 board of directors.

ID5 will become profitable in a few months, so the funding will go toward expansion into other media and into other areas around the world. Cookies on the web are just one of many options for identity, Roche said.

As a next step for the company, he believes ID5 can identify and replace IP addressed in TVs, and formal IDs in mobile apps.

The ability to target, optimize campaigns and measure performance also is important for television, mobile apps, and audio such as podcasts. The company plans to support identity across all those channels.

Asia will likely become a new market, while ID5 already has investments in Japan and Australia. When asked whether ID5 investment partners use the company’s technology, he said “some do,” but expect to see a formal announcement in the future.

Thousands of publishers, advertisers, and ad-tech platforms have adopted ID5's technologies, including Havas Media, New York Post, M6 Publicité, Adobe Advertising platform, OpenX, and Eyeota, a Dun & Bradstreet company. Today, nearly 50% of online advertising transactions are supported by ID5.

Updated: The article has been updated with Martin Sorrell's comment.