TapFwd, a mobile data marketplace founded by two LiveRamp vets, raised a $3 million seed round led by Partech Ventures with participation from previous investor Tekton Ventures.
TapFwd matches online and offline data sets to mobile device IDs and then sells these data sets to help advertisers target campaigns. The rough analogy is “a BlueKai built from the ground up for mobile,” said TapFwd CEO Alex Wasserman.
By including data that marketers want to use for targeting, such as automotive, financial, purchase history and demographic data sets, TapFwd plans to accelerate the use of mobile as a platform for brand advertising, not just performance advertising.
“Person-level targeting in desktop has been around for awhile, but on mobile it hasn’t been around except for Facebook,” Wasserman said.