In today's ExchangeWire news digest: fashion start-up Lyst raise $85m in the run-up to a planned IPO; the US edition of Marie Claire magazine is acquired by media platform Future; and VideoAmp secure $75m in funding from Capital IP.   Lyst raise [...]

Highlights - Total recorded investment across the advertising and marketing technology industries in Q1 2021 surpassed USD$23.7bn, with an average disclosed transaction value of USD$244.8m. - M&A activity amounted to 67% of total funding, with consolidation driven by mobile players, private equity, [...]

GumGum, a global contextual advertising technology company, today announced a USD $75m (£54.5m) investment by Goldman Sachs Growth to accelerate the growth of its sophisticated contextual intelligence advertising product suite.    Demand for GumGum’s contextual advertising technology is growing rapidly as cookies [...]

IRIS.TV, the leading video data platform, today announced the completion of an $18m Series B funding round. Intel Capital, a division of Intel Corporation, led the round, with participation from investors including WISE Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, and Mirae Asset [...]

ID5, the leading independent identity solution provider, announces a “series A” funding round of USD $6m (£4.4m). Alliance Entreprendre and Progress Ventures join existing lead investor 360 Capital Partners to support ID5 in growing its privacy-first identification service for the [...]

Anzu, the global advertising platform dedicated to gaming, has announced USD $9m (£6.6m) in new funding. The round was co-led by BITKRAFT Ventures and HBSE Ventures, with participation from the world’s largest marketing services organisation WPP and Sony Innovation Fund, [...]

Smart AdServer, the independent ad tech platform, is reshaping its capital structure via a Management Buyout of current investor Cathay Capital by Capital Croissance, which becomes its new majority shareholder. Cathay Capital fuelled the foundational growth of Smart, and it [...]

Taboola is going public via a merger with ION Acquisition Corp. 1 Ltd. (NYSE: IACA), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, with USD $259m (£189.6m) in trust. Taboola has also secured approximately USD $285m (£208.6m) in primary and [...]

1plusX, the marketing intelligence platform today announces that it has secured USD $7.8m (£5.7m) in the first closing of its Series B funding round led by Swisscanto Invest, one of the leading asset managers in Switzerland with USD $220bn (£160.9bn) [...]

At the tail end of last year I profiled 17 European ad tech companies that I expect to do big things in 2021. With the exception of one or two, these companies are very much at the start of their [...]