Admiral Raises $19 Million in New Funding

NEW YORK — Admiral has closed $19 million in growth equity and debt funding, led by Harbert Growth Partners, the growth equity team of Harbert Management Corporation (HMC), joined by Bridge Bank and others. Admiral is a Visitor Relationship Management (VRM) Company that helps thousands of digital publishers worldwide grow visitor relationships and revenue.

This latest funding, coupled with previous equity and debt, brings Admiral’s total capital raised to $28 million, with Admiral funding partners including Birchmere Ventures, Gulfshore Capital, Florida Opportunity Fund, and media publisher Capitol Broadcasting.

Harbert has a proven track record of identifying and funding industry leading software companies, including AI-powered customer experience platform Clarabridge (acquired by Qualtrics), location based intelligence software platform MapAnything (acquired by Salesforce) and field service software platform Payzer (acquired by WEX). Bridge Bank has been helping innovators in the tech sector bring industry-leading ideas to their next stage of development, from startup to IPO and beyond, for more than 20 years.

With this infusion, Admiral will serve publishers even better with larger Revenue, Product, and Customer Love teams, expand internationally, and build on its lead in AI-powered marketing automation for media publishers, copyright access control, and 1st-party data innovations. Harbert’s and Bridge Bank’s funding and strategic resources will help Admiral grow publisher revenue worldwide.

Admiral’s Visitor Relationship Management platform builds relationships, revenue, and retention for thousands of premium publishers and networks worldwide including CNBC, Hearst, New York Post, Paramount, Rotten Tomatoes, USA Today Sports, and more. Described as marketing automation for media publishers, Admiral draws inspiration from B2B SaaS giants such as Hubspot, Drift, and Salesforce, applying inbound marketing principles on a B2C level to help sites engage site visitors and maximize revenue. Admiral’s AI-powered VRM modules include:

• Measure: Revenue Analytics
• Recover: Adblock Recovery
• Transact: Paid Subscriptions, Donations, Memberships
• Connect: 1st-Party Data Collection, Segmentation, and Activation
• Convert: Email Acquisition, Registration, Social Growth, Mobile Downloads, & Content Recommendation
• Consent: CMP (GDPR/GPP)

“We’re pleased to partner with Admiral to provide them with a flexible and customized venture debt solution,” said Blake Reid, senior director, in Bridge Bank’s Technology Banking Group. “We look forward to supporting Admiral in their mission to provide visitor relationship management tools and expertise to help publishers navigate the evolving digital landscape toward The Authenticated Web.”

“The core business model of the Internet is shifting from an adtech paradigm to a martech paradigm — The Authenticated Web — and publishers need help, fast,” said Dan Rua, CEO and co-founder, Admiral. “Relationships drive revenue, and publishers that embrace that reality will survive and thrive for decades to come. The key is delivering the right offer, to the right visitor, at the right time, and AI-powered VRM makes that possible with zero dev lift. We couldn’t have hoped for a better lead partner than Harbert at this stage in Admiral’s journey. We’re incredibly proud of the team and what we’ve accomplished for our customers, but we’ve still got plenty of work ahead.”