Instreamatic Raises $6.1 Million Series A to Scale Interactive Voice Advertising

Investment will bring AI-fueled voice ads to more brands, audio and video content publishers, and consumers; Progress Ventures leads the round, with Accomplice and Google Assistant Investments participating

Instreamatic, providing an end-to-end voice AI platform for managing, measuring and monetizing conversations between brand and consumer, today announced it has raised $6.1 million in Series A funding. Progress Ventures led the round, joined by Accomplice and Google Assistant Investments. The funding enables Instreamatic to quickly scale its technical and business staff; expand the capabilities of its voice AI conversational-dialogue infrastructure; and pursue more global partnerships with brands, audio and video content publishers, advertising platforms, and application developers.

“The future of advertising on audio and video platforms is in two-way brand-consumer engagement,” said Stas Tushinskiy, CEO, Instreamatic. “It’s clear that the traditional one-way model is broken. Consumers don’t like being fed annoyingly repetitive ads. Brands are under ever-increasing pressure to make those moments meaningful while supporting strong ROI demands. On the publisher side, audio and video platforms need a better way to prove their audiences and ad inventory deliver their promise to brands. Our voice AI infrastructure, deployed by brands such as IKEA, Infiniti, and HP and across platforms like Pandora and Gaana, is empirically demonstrating that conversational marketing benefits brands, consumers, and publishers alike. We enable the brand-consumer conversation.”

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Voice ads by Instreamatic have averaged a 12% voice engagement rate, with some campaigns reaching 19%. Instreamatic’s unique voice AI infrastructure enables brands to deliver verbal calls-to-action as part of their audio and video ad creative. Speaking aloud, consumers can respond to ads with a single-word or a short dialogue response to continue a two-way interaction or to quickly return to their content. Instreamatic’s AI capabilities understand the intent and tone of consumers’ natural and conversational responses to take the appropriate next action.

Importantly, Instreamatic’s technology enables continuous dialogues based on an individual consumer’s previous interactions with that brand. This enables brands to customize future voice engagement to individuals knowing exactly where that consumer is in the buyer lifecycle, and not waste budget on disinterested consumers with repetitive ad impressions. Voice ad campaigns pioneered by major brands have demonstrated the power of these brief interactive ads to engage listeners in brand experiences they find both likeable and memorable.

Instreamatic continues to sign publisher and partner agreements that expand the reach of its unique technology. In addition to audio content platforms and networks such as Pandora, Salem Media, and Gaana, Instreamatic’s recent deal with Universal Electronics expands voice ads into the smart-TV industry.

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“Consumer demand for audio and video content, and the ubiquity of smart devices delivering that content on-demand, continues to accelerate,” said Nick MacShane, the Founding Partner at Progress Ventures, the venture capital arm of Progress Partners, a full-service merchant bank. “What hasn’t caught up is how brands and publishers can effectively engage those audiences in the same medium and analytically prove the ROI of their audio and video platform ad spend. We’re proud to help Instreamatic build value for the digital future, proving that its model is a solution for advertisers, publishers, and consumers who clearly prefer natural voice-driven interactions.”