Centro reloads with $30 million in funding
Summary
Neuberger Berman Private Equity, a unit of the New York-based money management firm, led the Centro deal. Centro is profitable, said CEO Shawn Riegsecker, who will use the cash to keep building new technology and acquisitions, such as its 2013 purchase of SiteScout, a software platform for real-time bidding on digital advertising. Riegsecker wants to combine both real-time and advanced purchase capabilities as television, the largest part of the advertising business, shifts toward automated, or programmatic, buying and placement. “We think well be the first.” Centro faces a wide array of traditional ad-tech competitors, such as Mediaocean, MediaMath, AppNexus, Turn and Rubicon Project, as well as giants such as Adobe and Google and big rivals moving into the space from related software categories, such as Salesforce and Oracle. FTV, which also backed Northbrook-based data science firm Mu Sigma and Chicago-based security software provider Trustwave, invested $22.5 million in Centro four years ago.