Parsec Raises $1.5M To Accelerate Attention-Based Ad Metrics

Some of those investors include Jonah Goodhart, the CEO of Moat, who made his contribution by way of early stage capital investor group WGI; Brett Wilson, the CEO of video ad platform TubeMogul and Brendan Spain, VP of advertising for the Americas at the Financial Times. Parsec plans to put its fresh injection toward new headcount and to expand its product to other formats like branded content and mobile video. The company, which employs 19, has consistently hired about two people per month since the beginning of the year, and was already profitable pre-raise, according to its founder and CEO Marc Guldimann. The Financial Times first deployed cost-per-hour (CPH) ads on-site using Chartbeat in 2015, in which the publisher only charged advertisers if a unit was in view for at least five seconds. “The [industry is] getting [better] at refining metrics to better reflect attention.” In addition to its ad network, Parsec purveys a proprietary mobile web format called Sled, which comes in several flavors, including an interstitial that “slides” over article text when a user thumbs over content, as well as an interactive Sled Brand Lift survey tool.