Singapore – Impact, the global partnership automation technology platform for brands and publishers, has announced that it has raised US$150m in funding, bringing the company’s valuation to US$1.5b.
Through the newly secured funding, Impact will be accelerating its investment in partnership automation innovation, increasing channel partnerships, and scaling its go-to-market efforts for brands, agencies, and publishers globally. In turn, this will accelerate growth for all participants in the ‘partnership economy’.
“As consumers’ digital behavior and habits accelerate, brands turn to partnerships to reach consumers in a more meaningful way. With this, Impact can aid publishers, brands, and agencies to aggregate, orchestrate and optimize partnerships – affiliate, influencer, commerce content publishers, B2B, and more – in a single, unified platform,” said Impact in a press statement.
Furthermore, the funding will help boost Impact’s growing business in SEA, and will eventually enable the platform to double the size of its APAC team by early 2022.
Antoine Gross, Impact’s general manager for SEA, commented that the new funding will help drive Impact’s expansion plans in SEA and APAC across all business functions to support the surge in demand for the partnership automation technology.
“Southeast Asian and global brands like Razer, Circles Life, Allianz, Charles & Keith, HSBC, Decathlon, Love Bonito, Zilingo, Sephora and Lenovo are already harnessing the power of our technology to create a dynamic new customer acquisition channel with partnerships – and we look forward to helping many other brands drive incremental revenue and brand value,” said Gross.
Meanwhile, Impact’s CEO David Yovanno shared that brands are searching for new and authentic ways to reach consumers, more so now than ever before as traditionally relied-upon methods of advertising have become increasingly more disrupted and expensive.
“Partnerships create a path to the modern consumer by establishing a natural connection in the form of trusted information, reviews, and recommendations, and done with the consumer’s experience in mind. Impact has seen impressive growth in productive partnerships by driving this new wave of connection between brands, publishers, and consumers,” said Yovanno.
Impact has also announced that it has surpassed US$100m in annual recurring revenue, solidifying its leadership position in the partnerships category. The said funding was led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar Investments, and was joined by Providence Public.
