Time Warner, parent (for now) of Time Inc., and Condé Nast have joined in on in a $5 million round of funding for programmatic ad developer, iSocket, the firm announced Monday.
iSocket provides platforms specifically for programmatic direct sales. R&R Venture Partners and Vivo Nevo were also named as investors in the round.
"Condé Nast is pleased to support a platform that helps our premium advertising partners seamlessly enter the world of programmatic buying," says Alanna Gombert, general manager of Condé Nast’s programmatic buying group CatalystDesk, in a statement.
iSocket’s CEO, Richard Jalichandra, says the new funds will be used to polish its publisher- and advertiser-facing tools, and to expand partnerships.
On that front, iSocket also announced that Kevin McCabe, a former ad exchange exec at Microsoft, was joining the company as VP of business development. He’ll be tasked with finding new partners for the firm.
According to research collected by eMarketer, programmatic direct advertising currently accounts for more than a quarter of digital display spending in the U.S. It could take as much as a third of the digital ad dollars by next year before leveling off.
