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Symbiosys, the one-year-old startup backed by retail media veterans, wants a piece of retailers’ growing ad businesses.
After raising $9 million in a Series A round of funding in January, the firm is announcing its first partnerships, with DoorDash and Best Buy. The two retailers will test Symbiosys’ technology, which lets advertisers buy and target ads using retailers’ data. Symbiosys’ technology is plugged into platforms like Google, Meta and TikTok.
Symbiosys is one of a growing number of startups looking to cash in on retail media. The firm competes with companies like Criteo, Epsilon and Microsoft. Morgan Stanley forecasts that adtech firms will pocket $26 billion of the $130 billion advertisers spend on retail media this year.
The lofty promises of commerce media—better ad targeting as cookies decline, the ability to track sales and fat margins for retailers—make retail media one of the fastest-growing types of advertising. But much of that remains elusive, as retailers rush to stand up their media networks and advertisers face measurement challenges and high prices.
Firms like Symbiosys aim to solve those challenges, specifically around helping brands get more insight from retailers’ first-party data.
Symbiosys CEO Bashar Kachachi said his firm is trying to differentiate itself by focusing on mid-funnel advertising—like persuading someone to try a new brand.
“If you think of onsite [advertising], retail media as the very bottom of the funnel, and then branding—ads on the open web—as the top of the funnel, it felt like there was a really big, important opportunity in the middle of the funnel and not a lot of emphasis there,” Kachachi said. “Most consumers are beginning their shopping journeys on search engines or on social media platforms.”
Symbiosys’ leadership has a heavy background in retail media. Kachachi previously built adtech products at Microsoft and Google. Co-founder and advisor Jonathan Opdyke is the former CEO of HookLogic. Patrick Miller, cofounder of Flywheel Digital, which sold to Omnicom for $835 million, is also an advisor to Symbiosys. Two other HookLogic veterans, John Roswech and Dan Cooke, serve as chief revenue officer and senior vice president of engineering for Symbiosis, respectively.