Growth Funds for Data-Driven Ad Tech Firm Spongecell

In New York, data-driven ad technology firm Spongecell has raised $10.5m in a combination of debt and equity financing, which it will use to further expand its CORE data ingestion engine.

Spongecell's technology enables users to transform standard ads into dynamic, interactive digital ad experiences that run anywhere on the web. The firm's CORE (creative optimization relevance engine) is an ad serving platform combining data integrations with optimization and decisioning tools.

New funding comes from existing investor Safeguard Scientific, with participation from venture debt company Pivotal Capital. CEO Ben Kartzman (pictured) comments: 'Spongecell is at the forefront of the current digital advertising transformation to personalized marketing, and we are excited and grateful that a great new partner like Pivotal has come on board to help us achieve our goals. With the release of the recent IAB Dynamic Content Standard, which the Spongecell product team co-authored, programmatic creative is on the cusp of fulfilling on its potential for data-driven, personalized marketing at scale'.

Web site: www.spongecell.com .