Opening Up Our Syndicate To The Industry; Google’s Ad Business Growth About To Hit A Wall
This is the FirstPartyCapital weekly newsletter. It covers news and updates about the FirstPartyCapital fund and its portfolio companies.
The FirstPartyCapital Syndicate Now Open To Everyone
We have been running the FirstPartyCapital fund and deal syndicate now for well over a year. The syndicate was open to anyone in the industry - with no commitments - when we first launched.
We made the decision early last year that access to the deal-by-deal syndicate required a minimum investment of $10K in our VC Fund. That will no longer be a requirement.
Why are we opening up the syndicate to everyone?
Our fund has hit a key milestone with the next tranche of investment coming from big-ticket industry LPs, strategic investors and institutional funds.
We have too much good deal flow in the series A category to keep hidden away from smart insiders like you.
We want to make sure you, dear reader, are getting a chance to invest in these high-growth businesses - and getting exposure to the up-side.
What does this mean for you?
Here is a run down on what will happen next:
If you’ve already signed up for the syndicate in the early days, you will be added back automatically to our investment platform and Slack group. Again please note there are no commitments to be in the syndicate.
You invest at your will.
If you’ve never filled in a form previously to access the syndicate, use the link below to express interest.
Express Interest Now In Joining The Industry’s Only Global Syndicate Focused On Ad Tech, MarTech & Digital Media….
The Google Ad Business, Hitting A Long-Term Roadblock
The Information published a fascinating piece about Google’s ad business this week. Entitled “How Google Is Preparing for the End of Internet Advertising (as We Know It)”, the piece details how Google is building strategy around the new privacy-first era.
In this new world, Google is not going to get the same access to personal data it once had. The company still has a huge data pile from owned and operated properties and tools.
It is still the top dog in ad tech. But privacy is causing serious headwinds for the growth of its only core revenue stream, digital advertising.
FirstPartyCaptial believes this shift to walled gardens and privacy will blunt Google’s growth long term - as it won’t be able to soak up valuable user data to power its black box ad arbitrage machine.
Most TV and retail media companies are wary of the big G - and rightly so. Letting Google leverage its Adwords demand power house will ultimately give them complete control over your stack and ad business.
You’ll just end like some apologetic junkie, protecting Google at industry body events (always a sad and pathetic sight).
In the privacy-first-walled-garden era, FirstPartyCapital sees a renaissance in the ad server and media execution category. One of our portfolio companies is already blazing a trail in the email ad server space. And there will be more investments coming over the next few months.
The Contextual IP Row Demonstrates Power Shift To Sell-Side
With the death of the 3P cookie and ID, contextual was supposed to be the great hope for the industry. But publishers don’t seem to be happy about the free lunch some ad tech vendors are getting off the back of their content.
Publishers are saying ad tech companies crawling their content to build contextual segments is an infringement on their IP. Given that the publishers are selling the same contextual deals to buyers, they are now looking to clamp down on the practice.
What will happen next is that we will likely see license deals get done between publishers and ad tech vendors, building in some sort of rev share model. If not, publishers will block crawlers - shutting off access to their content.
There is going to be an almighty row around those companies that are double dipping in ad verification and contextual segmentation.
Once again this demonstrates the shift to the sell-side. We at FirstPartyCapital believe that the future of ad tech is very much about tech enablement and not media/data arbitrage. Power to the publisher, indeed.
Deals Live On The FirstPartyCapital Platform
Evorra: The perfect application of “clean room” technology to a real world problem, moving a $200 billion data market into the privacy-first era …
Passendo: The leading category tech vendor in the email ad server space that just raised a pre-series A €2.3 million round …
The FirstPartyCapital fund: A $15 million fund investing in the next wave of innovative ad tech, martech and digital media startups, predominantly at the seed stage…