Netherlands-based Embrosa, a company that enables (global) brands to publish hyper-local social ads around brick-and-mortar stores that sell their brand, announced that it has secured €450K in a Seed round of funding.
The Dutch startup says it will use the funds to further develop its technical platform and scale up the sales and marketing teams.
The lead investor was the LIOF investment fund, which is responsible for regional development in the Dutch province of Limburg. Along with them were five Angels and the Limburg Technology Investment Fund (LTIF).
Founded in 2016 by Rogier van den Berg and Melanie Van Norden, Embrosa’s software allows businesses to post social media adverts in, for instance, 10 different languages, 13 different countries, and hyper-locally focused around 300+ stores.
All ads are hyper-locally tailored in terms of the language used, the content, and the images. Additionally, each ad is aimed toward the precise local audience who should view it. Through online marketing, Embrosa encourages customers to support local businesses.
Currently, the company operates globally in the food, beverage, and optical industries and has plans for expansion into further industries and nations.
Embrosa is currently doing this for wine brands, whisky brands, and optical/eyewear brands.
Co-founder Melanie van Norden explains the ads strategy through an example of a kids’ eyewear brand Milo & Me. She says, “Milo & Me is a children’s eyewear brand, and this brand is sold in hundreds of optical stores in Europe. These kids’ glasses are still mainly sold in-store, by the trusted local optician.”
“Kids’ eyewear is not sold through webshops. It, therefore, makes no sense for the Milo & Me brand to set up an international advertising campaign, because the potential buyers of this children’s eyewear brand live or work within a radius of 15 KMs around each and every store.”
“Moreover, the buyers are mainly parents with children. So you just want to publish ads hyper-locally in a radius around every store that sells Milo & Me and show these Milo & Me ads to young parents.”
“And you do want to highlight the independent optician in the ads too. Because it is precisely his or her advice that we, as end consumers, trust the most. We have automated this process of personalization and hyper-local publishing.”
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