Deal in focus: SuperAwesome raises $7m

Twenty Ten Capital, alongside IBIS TMT, has led a $7m series-A investment in SuperAwesome. The funding round also received support from Sandbox & Co as well as existing investors Hoxton Ventures.

Hoxton has known the company since inception in 2013 as it was founded by in-house venture partner Dylan Collins. According to Hussain Kanji, a partner at Hoxton, the VC supported SuperAwesome's seed round a year ago.

SuperAwesome has since been aiming to fill a gap in the children's online advertising market by matching children-focused companies with those wanting to advertise to children.

SuperAwesome is a platform for delivering compliant and child-safe advertising globally for family brands including Hasbro, Mattel and Lego.

Its technology, which is integrated into apps and websites, ensures children are not tracked by malicious advertising; furthermore, it guarantees that all content included in digital adverts are appropriate for children.

The company recently launched its Kids Web Services platform, which provides cloud-based tools to assist children's content creators to manage data privacy requirements. SuperAwesome also operates AwesomeAds, an advertising platform used by brand agencies in the US, the UK, Australia and south-east Asia. Furthermore, the company operates SuperAwesome Insights, a dedicated research division.

The business is headquartered in London and operates offices in New York, Bangkok and Sydney.

Regulation-driven
SuperAwesome has grown impressively over the last year thanks to new regulation in the US: the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA), which has strict rules around data-privacy requirements. The Federal Trade Commission has been forceful in its implementation of the new rules, already dishing out fines to high-profile companies including YouTube and Yelp.

According to Kanji, these new rules, which are expected to be implemented in Europe as well, have caused huge growth for SuperAwesome, and he believes the company could soon be looking at a $1bn valuation.

Alongside the regulation factor, there is also a significant gap in reaching children in the world of online and mobile advertising. Parminder Basran, of Twenty Ten says: "There is a huge migration from TV and print to online ad spend globally. But this hasn't happened in the children's market because of regulatory constraints. But SuperAwesome is offering brand mobility in a compliant way."

Basran says this became a very interesting deal because of SuperAwesome's clear niche: "This company is very focused, matching kids' brands to kids' publishers globally. This, along with the built-in regulatory compliance, gives the business a solid platform from which it can grow quickly."

Following the investment, backers will support the company in growing its platform through introductions to relevant companies. According to Kanji, SuperAwesome is aiming to be the intermediary for children's online advertising.

The digital market for children-focused digital advertising is only a fraction of the size of the children's TV advertising market. However, as TV advertising continues to decline, the digital children's advertising market is expected to grow by 300% in the next two years. As it stands, the global audience for children-focused advertising is around 250 million children accessing the internet through mobile, tablet and desktop devices each month.

The fresh capital will be used to hire more team members in the US as well as to further the company's development in south-east Asia.

People
Hoxton Ventures – Hussain Kanji
Twenty Ten Capital – Parminder Basran
IBIS TMT – Henry Chamberlain, Jamie Kirkwood

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