We have a full pouch of stories about Australian companies but our Emerging Markets editor has threatened bodily harm if I poach them. I can sneak in Aussie-born ecommerce personalization vendor Rokt, because it’s now based in New York. They’ve completed a secondary funding at a valuation of $2.4 billion, one year after a $325 million Series E at $1.95 billion. Not bad in a down year for tech stocks.
“Retail innovation, design and décor” sounds like an odd combination, although the décor in question has to do with store fixtures, not curtain swags. In any case,that’s what Retail Fluent does. They’ve just added retail media networks to the list, including in-store screens, programmatic ad sales, and audience measurement. And if you do want a drop valance in ruffled muslin, they can probably get you that too.
Chattermill extracts insights from the text of customer support messages to extract insights. Naturally, they say they do it better than competitors. They just raised a $26 million Series B, bringing total funding to $42 million.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.