Good-Loop

Idea

Please note that whilst the campaign is labelled as EIS eligible, the company has some of its SEIS allowance remaining. We will therefore be looking to seek SEIS relief on the first £60,530 invested into the campaign and EIS relief on the balance. Any tax relief is dependent on personal circumstances and may be subject to change in the future.

Introduction

600 million devices have ad blockers. That’s the biggest boycott in human history.

And it's not hard to work out why. Have you ever had to sit through a 30-second non-skippable video ad? Have you ever had to search exasperatedly for the 'X' button to close an annoying pop-up? Have you ever been distracted from what you're reading by a video ad that just automatically starts playing? Currently, for brands to get their content out to their consumers online, these are the types of advertising platforms they have to use. Likewise, if publishers want to be able to pay their journalists, this is the type of advertising they have to put on their site.

In the arms race for the best, loudest and most attention-grabbing online advertising solutions, somewhere along the way, we forgot about the people on the other side of the 'impression'.

Good-Loop is unique because it makes user control an asset rather than an inconvenience to online advertising.

Intended impact

Quite simply, advertisers will pay more for people who have chosen to watch their ads (opt-in advertising). It’s a higher quality environment for them to talk to consumers.

So we have built a unique tool which taps into existing adtech solutions and harnesses the inherent value of opt-in ads to generate free charity donations. Where everyone else in the industry is trying to interrupt, we’re trying to collaborate and offer a fair value exchange with people. In this way, we create more valuable ad inventory, which is why our publishers see a 3x higher return on their inventory whilst our advertisers get their videos watched for over twice as long as on YouTube.

The impact on the wider industry is huge. Considering publishers lost $22bn to ad blocking last year, the irritating and disrespectful nature of online ads is a big problem. Brands need to stop wasting money on poor quality inventory and instead use their money to engage with people in more meaningful ways.

Substantial accomplishments to date

At the end of 2017 Good-Loop was selected out of hundreds of startups as AdTech London's 'Next Big Thing'. It's a prestigious award, respected throughout the industry, and the prize is a $50k contract with Nestle, one of the world's largest advertisers.

Meanwhile, we've also sold ad campaigns to global brands such as Unilever and Canon. We run ads on premium sites and blogs all over the internet - reaching thousands of people every day - and we work directly with some of the world's largest global charities.

We've also received backing from Collider, London's top Martech accelerator, and funding from Innovate UK.

Monetisation strategy

Good-Loop has three main revenue streams:

1. Brands pay to put their video advertising on the Good-Loop platform. After their ad has been watched for 15 seconds the advertiser pays for a completed view. Global spend on digital video advertising was £23.7bn in 2017, growing 30% y.o.y.

2. Users can double their donation by sharing the advert on social media, by visiting the advertiser's website, or by subscribing. Brands pay for every incentivised call-to-action and Good-Loop collects valuable, GDPR compliant PII data.

3. Good-Loop also offers a smart retargeting service for charities. We can provide invaluable 'warm leads' - making charity comms more effective and efficient. In 2016 charities spent £458.8m on advertising in the UK alone.

Use of proceeds

We're raising £250k and have already been made a conditional offer for £100k of this through grant funding. We will invest these funds into growing our commercial and technical capabilities, more specifically:

- 45% Sales:
•Grow our sales team, focusing on hiring two key people with industry expertise & a black book of media agency / publisher contacts.

- 15% Marketing:
•Develop a strong, trustworthy Good-Loop brand, primarily through SEO, eCRM and content marketing – as well as a strong PR strategy.

- 20% Product development, to enable scale
•Develop ad targeting capabilities & integrate with programmatic APIs
•Build self-serve ad platform for SMEs & content creators

- 20% Technical development
• Build ‘donation tracker’ dashboard & login portal for users / brands / publishers & charities
• Build payment gateway & GDPR compliant data store

These funds are expected to give us a 12-month runway.