What you need to know:

• Tech investment fund Ten13 has made its first adtech investment in Amplified Intelligence and its SaaS advertising attention platform.
• Ten13 was formed 18 months ago with a new model in tech VC giving upwards of 300 high net worth investors access to investments on a deal by deal basis, versus a closed, pooled fund.
• Managing Partner Stew Glynn is upbeat on attention metrics making fast headway globally with blue chip brands, media companies and agency groups.
• Per Glynn: “Amplified Intelligence is going to be front and centre and used by a huge amount of global brands and consumer brands, as well as a lot of agencies utilising their tools.”
• Amplified Intelligence CEO Prof Karen Nelson-Field said the funding would double the company’s team and fast track expansion into 10 international markets with the UK and US a priority. 

About 300 Australian wealthy families and entrepreneurs are behind tech investment fund Ten13 that has made its first deal in the adtech sector, which has seen rebounding investment interest globally from VC players after years of underwhelming returns from earlier start-ups. 

Ten13 itself is a new model in tech VC – started by tech entrepreneur and Shark Tank identity Steve Baxter – whereby investors choose to allocate funds on a deal-by-deal basis rather than a closed, pooled fund.

Ten13 is backing Karen Nelson-Field’s rapidly expanding advertising attention SaaS platform into 10 key global markets from Adelaide. Amplified Intelligence now has four of the six major global advertising holding groups and dozens of media companies and blue chip advertisers signed on for trials and deployment here and internationally.

The firm is building out a platform that will soon allow major advertisers, media agencies and media owners to plan and programmatically trade active and passive human attention on different advertising formats and channels.

Amplifying attention

Ten13’s Managing Partner Stew Glynn said it was the investment syndicate’s first entry into the long troubled adtech sector but said if Amplified Intelligence “achieve what we think they’re going to achieve, we think there will be a world class winner coming out of Australia.”

Launched about 18 months ago, the fund wants to be the next Blackbird Ventures, the VC company behind Canva, Eucalyptus and Culture Amp. Ten13 has already exited some of its earlier investments, including Clipchamp, which was acquired by Microsoft. 

Glynn said a handful of the Ten13’s private investors are knowledgable of the advertising sector and they, along with conversations with global agency groups, helped convince Ten13 that Karen Nelson-Field’s attention planning and trading platform was world leading. 

“It feels like we're at the front end of the curve on this shift in advertising, and I think that the shift towards attention transacted, like advertising spend, is going to be fast and it's going to be global,” Glynn told Mi3. “We're already seeing that from the customer base that's coming through. If we can get to delivering on that with real world attention, rather than it being just impression-based, I think Amplified Intelligence is going to be front and centre – and used by a huge amount of global brands and consumer brands, as well as a lot of agencies.

“We also talked to the head of strategy at OMG Global. She basically said that they've looked around the whole world trying to find the best operator with this model. And they settled on Amplified Intelligence as the one to back, support and to push out across their wider network.”

Eyes prize

Glynn said the post-seed investment round for Amplified Intelligence would likely lead quickly to Series A funding. 

“The next round of capital is to really scale growth and I wouldn't be surprised if Amplified Intelligence has future funding rounds come quicker than expected, given the trajectory of the business,” he said. 

“Our thesis on investing in Amplified Intelligence is we're really backing Karen and [Chief Growth Officer] Phil Townend’s view that the current measurement metrics around ad impressions is probably potentially the wrong sort of global benchmark. So I guess our view is that it's a massive industry. I think $400 billion is spent there," added Glynn.

"I don't know the exact amount, but I'd say 80 per cent of that goes towards the majors and our view is that the time are changing. People actually want to understand what a view is from an attention perspective and that it’s cutting through, not just what they're recording and measuring as an ad impression.

“Amplified intelligence has brought a new model forward, which is also getting world class kind of customers on both the agency side – WPP, Omnicom Publicis and others – as well as renowned brands like Shell, Mars, Pepsi, Twitter, Facebook and Spotify," Glynn continued.

"All these players are coming to the table trying to understand what the attention metric is. So we believe there's a window for a category creator to emerge that's going to basically help reset how attention is measured and then how advertising is spent and delivered from a programmatic perspective as well.”

Hire intelligence

Amplified Intelligence CEO Karen Nelson-Field told Mi3 the investment would be used to accelerate development of its SaaS platform and expansion into international markets. 

The company is now in six countries "and we're about to go to ten, and that takes more people," said Nelson-Field.

"Our systems are pretty automated, but you still need more people for that. The AttentionTrace APIs are getting into systems all over the world in terms of the agency holding companies. We'll be doubling our workforce in a very small amount of time."

She said the biggest overseas resource requirement is US and UK, "but locally, we'll be pretty much doubling our work force. We will be following our product roadmap, but we'll just have more people to build out what we need.”