Sonobi Completes Private Equity Transaction with Cohere Capital

With year-over-year profit up over 100%, Sonobi sets its sights on bridging the gap in digital media in a post-third-party cookie world

WINTER PARK, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sonobi, a digital media technology platform for premium publishers that brings greater efficiency, scale, transparency, and addressability to real-time advertising, today announced the closing of a strategic growth investment from Cohere Capital (“Cohere”). This investment will allow Sonobi to continue to invest in its technology platform, grow its engineering team, and extend its recent growth and market momentum. Through a partnership with Cohere, Sonobi also aims to acquire strategic companies across data, martech, and ad tech to build out a more comprehensive digital marketing platform.

Sonobi’s JetStream platform directly integrates with over 2,500 leading digital media properties and leverages its technology to provide advertisers with a solution to optimize their marketing spend. Using JetStream, advertisers can reach over 250 million potential consumers, and publishers can holistically manage their display, mobile, video, and in-app advertising inventory, allowing both parties to deliver media in an environment that prioritizes efficiency, transparency, and results.

“We are thrilled to partner with Cohere as we continue to invest in the resources and technology that will further fuel our growth and strengthen our market position. The Company has grown significantly in 2020, and we are launching a number of initiatives for our partners to continue that momentum,” said Michael Connolly, Sonobi CEO and Co-Founder. A primary focus for Sonobi will be to utilize its proprietary technology platform to act as the foundational layer for additional acquisitions over time. Michael continued, “We’ve been innovating market leading solutions since our inception, starting with inventing header bidding and most recently creating solutions for a cookie-less future. We operate as one of the most efficient, if not the most efficient, platforms in our industry and believe that we can achieve significant growth by acquiring and integrating a number of complementary leaders over time with Cohere’s assistance.”

Nik Shah, Cohere Managing Partner and Co-Founder, added, “Sonobi delivers a highly differentiated offering by combining innovative identity solutions with direct integrations to the top media properties, advertising agencies, and demand sources. We are very excited to partner with Michael and the Sonobi team as they continue to build the Company. With our investing focus on tech-enabled businesses, our growing portfolio of investments will also be able to add value and capabilities to Sonobi as the Company scales.” Individuals on the Cohere team have previously been involved with numerous leading digital advertising technology companies and helped those companies achieve success and scalability. As COVID-19 reshapes ad tech investments, Cohere’s investment in Sonobi signals the company’s strong growth trajectory and outlook.

As part of this transaction, Sonobi’s prior securityholders, including Safeguard Scientifics, exchanged their interests for cash and, as a result, have exited their interests in Sonobi. Sonobi thanks Safeguard for its historical support and funding.

About Sonobi

Since its inception in 2012, Sonobi has been a pioneer in digital advertising technology and programmatic spend. Sonobi’s people-based identifier (PBID) incorporates multiple identity approaches into a single ID that is cross-compatible and able to match first-party data from both publishers and brands, solving for identity across screens and environments. With access to over 125 million people across premium publications on the Sonobi platform, advertisers are now able to reach large audiences in cookie-less environments with increased transparency. For more information, visit: www.sonobi.com.

About Cohere Capital

Cohere Capital is a Boston-based private equity firm focused exclusively on middle market growth companies. Cohere Capital has a flexible mandate across growth markets, but primarily targets recapitalizations and growth investments in rapidly growing technology-enabled services companies. For more information, visit: www.coherecapital.com.