With a focus on email marketing ad revenues, Copenhagen’s Passendo raises €2.3 million

Copenhagen-based startup Passendo has raised €2.3 million in a pre-Series A round. Building upon the growing trend of newsletter engagements, Passendo helps publishers boost commercial potential by providing ad server and supply-side platform services. With this round, the firm aims to triple the headcount within the next two years, primarily to meet strong demand from both the US and UK markets. To date, the firm has raised approximately €2.8 million.

Operating in one of the oldest and largest online sectors - marketing, Passendo founders Andreas Jürgensen and Anders Rasmussen recognised that the traditional methods of ad serving didn’t quite align when applied to email marketing. Just short of reinventing the wheel, the duo set out to fix this conundrum in 2016, giving publishers access to new incremental revenues, as well as better control over the quality and content of the ads being served.

Already partnered with some of the world’s largest media publishers including Roularta, Springer Nature, the UK-based Reach and the Belgium-based IPM Media, since employing Passendo’s technology, Blackstone owned client IDG (International Data Group) showed a 454% revenue increase, and German publisher Ebner saw an 80% in time spent managing newsletter campaigns.

Passendo’s €2.3 million pre-Series A round was led by Newion Partners with participation from FirstPartyCapital.

“Passendo offers a focused solution that neither Google nor other AdTech companies can deliver, giving publishers and marketers unique email Ad delivery and measurement capabilities,” commented FirstPartyCapital’s Rich Ashton. “We’ve been incredibly impressed by the team, and we are excited to work with them to build a global category winner.”