Campanja Raises $5M Series A, Led By Hoxton Ventures & DFJ Esprit, To Grow Its Online Ad Optimizer Tech

Online ad campaign optimization startup Campanja, which has developed a search engine marketing platform aimed at maximizing customers’ ad spend in real-time by adjusting for factors such as location, time, and seasonality, has beefed up its coffers — closing a $5 million Series A, led by Hoxton Ventures and DFJ Esprit.

Google backer and Angel investor Ram Shriram, also participated in the round, along with David Axmark, co-founder of MySQL.

Campanja, a Swedish startup founded back in 2010, said it plans to use the new financing for an international expansion push that will include opening new offices in London and New York (its existing offices are in Stockholm, Sweden, and Palo Alto).

The new capital will also go on expanding its team with “key” hires at those existing offices, as well as continued invested in platform development. The startup grew to 44 employees last year, and forecasts its revenues will grow 300% this year.

Campanja does not break out customer numbers but notes “major U.S. advertisers” as being among its user base. (Netflix is one such customer it names on its website.) Other customers are located in Europe and the Middle East.

It claims its technology platform can improve online ad campaign effectiveness by up to 60%, using technologies such as real-time tracking, predictive modelling and high frequency bidding.

Prior to this Series A round, Hoxton Ventures’ Hussein Kanji and Rob Kniaz had previously invested in Campanja, before firmly establishing their formal fund late last year. The VC firm invests in early stage European startups, with a stated aim of finding the next billion dollar-plus success story in the region.

Commenting on the funding round in a statement, Kniaz said: “We’ve been continually impressed with what Campanja has built and what its product can deliver for sophisticated online advertisers.”

Scott Sage, partner at DFJ Esprit, added in another statement: “Campanja is yet another example of European world-class engineering talent that has quickly gained market share across Europe, and is now closing multi-million dollar deals in the US. Accelerating the Europe-to-US expansion is a great example of how we can leverage DFJ Esprit’s US links to assist our portfolio companies.”