Wywy, a German startup that helps advertisers serve ads to mobile devices in sync with TV commercials, plans to launch in the US and elsewhere, having raised a $7 million second investment round.
The outfit ingests ad videos from advertisers and uses decade-old automated content recognition in mobile apps to identify when a viewer is watching a particular ad on TV.
“The challenge is capturing viewers’ attention as it wanes from the first screen to the second screen,” says Wywy global ad sales director Eric St. Gemme. “We can trigger that information in realtime, within milliseconds, to a DSP like AppNexus. We can deliver a display campaign online and in mobile at the second the commercial starts.”
Last week, Wywy used some of its new funds to acquire Second Screen Networks, a peer already operating in the field in the States. “US is on the roadmap,” St. Gemme says, “UK, France, Italy.”
We spoke with St. Gemme in New York at the TVOT conference.