Raises $2.5 million from Nashville Capital Network and other investors

Spiny.ai (Spiny), an innovative content analytics, publisher intelligence, and advertising technology provider announced today that they had emerged from beta for a global product launch. The artificial intelligence (AI) powered digital publishing platform is currently used by a group of anchor customers that includes On3 Media, Outsider.com, and Leaders.com. Spiny also announced it has raised $2.5 million in venture capital from Nashville Capital Network (NCN) and others.

“Traditional approaches to building digital publishing assets are expensive and cumbersome, especially when it comes to understanding user behavior, revenue generation, and editorial performance”

Spiny’s platform enables digital publishers to manage and scale their businesses more effectively. Through Spiny’s use of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, publishers now have a single platform to understand their audience, define their content strategy, manage editorial teams, and optimize revenue growth. Spiny also offers a programmatic advertising solution known as BidRoll, which allows digital publishers to better monetize their content, with minimal ad operations resources required.

Spiny was founded by Nana B. Nyantekyi, Shannon Terry, and Andrew Johnson, who have significant experience in digital publishing including roles with CBS Sports, Rivals.com, 247Sports, and Comicbook.com. Nana B. Nyantekyi will serve as CEO of Spiny.ai and brings his wealth of experience in data and business intelligence to leading the company.

“Traditional approaches to building digital publishing assets are expensive and cumbersome, especially when it comes to understanding user behavior, revenue generation, and editorial performance,” says Nyantekyi. “Spiny was born out of our frustrations running publishing companies, where growth was achieved with large technical teams and complex technologies. The current tools on the market primarily focus on content and editorial analytics. We felt there was a need to develop a product that ties together all the core pillars of digital publishing – audience, editorial, and revenue. Now with Spiny, digital publishers, large and small, have a tool that provides a full 360-degree view of what a publisher needs to grow sustainably, maximize revenue and make effective real-time decisions.”

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Software and operational tools have helped digital publishers in recent years, however, compared to other industries, such as advertising and marketing, there has been a lack of specialized tools to support digital publishers. The $550 billion industry is rapidly growing, with a CAGR of 12% according to the AP. Businesses are witnessing shifts in operations, audiences, and monetization strategies as they continue to move from traditional media to digital platforms. Publishers are eager for data solutions and software to accelerate growth and maximize revenue without the large technical overheads.

To finance the rapid growth of the company, Spiny announced its first institutional round of funding led by Nashville Capital Network (NCN). The injection of capital will allow Spiny to grow its team and build out key product features, such as subscription analytics and multimedia tools.

“The team at Spiny recognized the need for innovation in digital publishing. We thought they were the ideal team to tackle the constantly changing landscape impacting the industry, namely first-party data, content monetization and audience growth. The Spiny team lived it as publishers and they understand the need for tools to manage publishing assets,” said Sid Chambless, Managing Partner of NCN. “We are pleased to partner with Nana, Shannon, and Andy to solve this problem.”

Spiny has been revolutionary for both midmarket and enterprise operators. Will Crall of On3.com, the fastest-growing sports publisher in the US, has seen the impact of implementing Spiny. “Spiny allows me to easily visualize our company’s performance in real-time. Instead of opening multiple software tools, I have everything I need to manage and make decisions in one place. I’ve been extremely impressed with the Spiny team. They have made numerous improvements and customizations to the software to fit our specific needs,” said Crall.

Brandon O’Neal, VP of Monetization, Ads and Products at On3.com said, “Revenue managers, Ad-Ops teams, and business intelligence leaders will all be more efficient and effective at monetizing content with the assistance of Spiny. Its ability to use machine learning for monitoring and anomaly detection ensures that we do not lose revenue due to poor ad bidder performance or broken ad units for example – all this in addition to the upside it creates via its BidRoll ad monetization product.”

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