Visibl rebrands as Brandzooka, raises $1.5M equity round

BOULDER — Local ad-tech startup Visibl – cofounded last year by former Crispin Porter + Bogusky exec Alex Bogusky — announced on Thursday a $1.5 million funding round and a rebranding of the company to Brandzooka.

Digital marketing agency IMM led the investment, along with Galvanize Ventures, eonCapital Ventures, Mahalo Capital and RSVP Ventures.

Aquiles La Grave, co-founder and CEO of Boulder-based Brandzooka, said Tuesday that the new cash will help the firm accelerate development of its programmatic video marketing software platform that enables small businesses to place their videos in front of highly targeted audiences on the websites of major content providers like CNN or the New York Times.

Such capabilities previously have been available only to large enterprises that can afford an advertising agency with similar programmatic capabilities. That’s because it typically takes a minimum buy of $250,000 or more, La Grave said. Brandzooka’s platform gives businesses the ability to make buys as small as $50 for a guaranteed number of clicks, removing the ad agency layer. Brandzooka makes money by trying to place orders at a slightly better cost than what is purchased and keeping the difference.

The platform aims to give small businesses much greater visibility for their videos, rather than just the usual channels available to them like YouTube, Facebook and the companies’ own websites. Thus, those small businesses are able to compete with large corporations for advertising space.

“All thy need to do is have a video and have an idea of who they want to see that video,” La Grave said. “If you see an ad on nytimes.com, you’re not thinking it’s a small advertiser working out of his garage.”

La Grave said the new funding will help Brandzooka roll out several new features over the coming months, and it could also help the company double to as many as 25 employees by the end of the year.

Founded by La Grave, Bogusky and Kelly Dotseth in May of last year, Brandzooka released its first beta version in October. La Grave declined to disclose revenue or a specific number of users other than to say the number of users is in the thousands. But he said the lineup of investors itself indicates “significant revenue.”

Bogusky serves on the company’s board of directors in what La Grave termed a sort of hands-on executive chairman role with plenty of input on product design and features.

Brandzooka is up to 12 employees from a count of three just six months ago. La Grave said he’s expecting to close out the year with closer to 25. While most of the hiring will be in Boulder, the company is also looking at establishing sales offices in New York and Los Angeles this year.

“We’re really excited about the level of funding we’ve been able to close,” he said.

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