Admiral, The Visitor Relationship Management (VRM) Company, announced the successful close of $19M in growth equity and debt funding, led by Harbert Growth Partners, the growth equity team of Harbert Management Corporation (HMC), joined by Bridge Bank and others. This latest funding, coupled with previous equity and debt, brings Admiral’s total capital raised to $28M, with Admiral funding partners including Birchmere Ventures, Gulfshore Capital, Florida Opportunity Fund, and media publisher Capitol Broadcasting.
Harbert has a proven track record of identifying and funding industry leading software companies, including AI-powered customer experience platform Clarabridge (acquired by Qualtrics), location based intelligence software platform MapAnything (acquired by Salesforce) and field service software platform Payzer (acquired by WEX). Bridge Bank has been helping innovators in the tech sector bring industry-leading ideas to their next stage of development, from startup to IPO and beyond, for more than 20 years.
With this infusion, Admiral will serve publishers even better with larger Revenue, Product, and Customer Love teams, expand internationally, and build on its lead in AI-powered marketing automation for media publishers, copyright access control, and 1st-party data innovations. Harbert’s and Bridge Bank’s funding and strategic resources will help Admiral grow publisher revenue worldwide.
Admiral’s Visitor Relationship Management platform builds relationships, revenue, and retention for thousands of premium publishers and networks worldwide including CNBC, Hearst, New York Post, Paramount, Rotten Tomatoes, USA Today Sports, and more. Described as marketing automation for media publishers, Admiral draws inspiration from B2B SaaS giants such as Hubspot, Drift, and Salesforce, applying inbound marketing principles on a B2C level to help sites engage site visitors and maximize revenue. Admiral’s AI-powered VRM modules include:
- Measure: Revenue Analytics
- Recover: Adblock Recovery
- Transact: Paid Subscriptions, Donations, Memberships
- Connect: 1st-Party Data Collection, Segmentation, and Activation
- Convert: Email Acquisition, Registration, Social Growth, Mobile Downloads, & Content Recommendation
- Consent: CMP (GDPR/GPP)
“We’re pleased to partner with Admiral to provide them with a flexible and customized venture debt solution,” said Blake Reid, senior director, in Bridge Bank’s Technology Banking Group. “We look forward to supporting Admiral in their mission to provide visitor relationship management tools and expertise to help publishers navigate the evolving digital landscape toward The Authenticated Web.”
Last week, Admiral announced a partnership with The Trade Desk’s OpenPass. The Trade Desk has their own successful history of working with Bridge Bank. The bank played a contributing role to The Trade Desk’s growth, ultimately resulting in their IPO in 2016.
Admiral also completed a strategic move to bolster its leadership team, adding Wayne Hunter, Managing Partner of Harbert Growth Partners, and Birchmere Partner Sean Ammirati, former COO of ReadWriteWeb and Founder/CEO of mSpoke (acquired by LinkedIn), to its Board of Directors.
“We followed Admiral’s progress for years and kept seeing more top media brands adopt their solution,” said Wayne Hunter, Managing Partner of Harbert Growth Partners. “General purpose marketing automation platforms like Hubspot, Salesforce, and Adobe Marketing Cloud aren’t built to help media publishers grow 1st-party visitor relationships, data, and revenue, so Admiral’s AI-powered VRM is filling the gap quickly.”
“The core business model of the Internet is shifting from an adtech paradigm to a martech paradigm — The Authenticated Web — and publishers need help, fast,” said Dan Rua, CEO and co-founder, Admiral. “Relationships drive revenue, and publishers that embrace that reality will survive and thrive for decades to come. The key is delivering the right offer, to the right visitor, at the right time, and AI-powered VRM makes that possible with zero dev lift. We couldn’t have hoped for a better lead partner than Harbert at this stage in Admiral’s journey. We’re incredibly proud of the team and what we’ve accomplished for our customers, but we’ve still got plenty of work ahead.”
“Admiral predicted the importance of visitor relationship management ahead of much of the industry,” said Rob Beeler, Founder & CEO of Beeler.tech and Head of Ad Operations at Golf.com. “With Google now throwing their weight behind ‘user choice’, Admiral’s strength in visitor journeys and 1st-party data will help more publishers than ever. I’m excited to see smart money flow to such a quality team and publisher-first mission.”
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