Walmart has stepped up to acquire SkyDeck alumnus advertisement platform Polymorph Labs after the latter had raised $10.5m in funding.
Polymorph Labs, a US-based online advertisement platform operator and graduate of University of California, Berkeley’s SkyDeck accelerator, has been acquired by retail group Walmart for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 2013 as AdsNative, provides an online advertising service that enables clients to run customised ad campaigns and monetisation strategies across more than 75 ad networks, exchanges and management platforms.
Polymorph Labs supports an auction practice known as server-side header bidding, where bids for advertising space are handled by a server rather than the client’s own web browser to stop them from losing out due to latency.
Walmart expects Polymorph’s technology to fuel its entry into new areas of advertising and help it target audience segments based on their shopping behaviour.
Polymorph’s team will become part of Walmart’s advertising subsidiary, Walmart Media Group, which also handles marketing for third parties.
Polymorph collected $8.5m in a 2015 series A round that included Rakuten’s corporate venture capital arm, Rakuten Ventures, Interwest Partners and Onset Ventures.
Interwest had previously led the company’s $2m seed round in 2014, investing with MDC Ventures, the subsidiary of MDC Partners then known as KBS+ Ventures, as well as Onset Ventures, the Foundry Group Angels syndicate and angel investors Barry Honig, Mike Kerns and Sourabh Niyogi.
