- Paris-based Mediads raised €3 million from Seventure Partners, 404 Ventures
- The platform lets brands run their existing social ads through premium media publishers, keeping the same creative, targeting, and tracking
- Mediads has been self-funded and profitable since 2022
Mediads, a Paris-based startup, secured €3 million in seed funding from Seventure Partners, 404 Ventures, and business angels to accelerate its US expansion.
The company believes that trust in premium media, rather than better targeting or bigger budgets, is what most social advertisers are missing.
The French startup, founded in 2022 by Alfred Cardinal and Stéphane Labrouche, connects brands with top publishers to amplify social ads. Advertisers can use their existing Meta, TikTok, or LinkedIn campaigns without changing the creative, targeting, or measurement. Mediads sends these ads through its network of media partners, using their audience trust to improve results.
Mediads gives advertisers easy access to publisher authority without needing to rebuild campaigns or make new deals. The platform works with current social ad budgets, making it simple to try without changing how teams work. Publishers can earn extra revenue by leveraging their audience’s trust while keeping editorial content the same.
Mediads says its approach can improve performance by up to 150% compared to running the same ads without media amplification, though it does not share details on how it measures this. For example, a retail brand using Meta could run its campaign through a Mediads partner like Euronews or 20 Minutes and, according to company data, see higher conversion rates from the same creative and audience because of the media context.
Mediads’ approach to leveraging publisher inventory and audience trust is similar to what branded content platforms, native ad networks, and tools from companies like Outbrain and Taboola offer. Mediads says it stands out by fitting seamlessly into advertisers’ existing systems, avoiding workflow changes, and offering a high-quality, exclusive publisher network rather than an open marketplace.
“In a context where the effectiveness of social advertising is being called into question, Mediads provides a particularly relevant response by reconciling performance and trust, two major challenges in the advertising market. We were won over by the team’s ability to integrate seamlessly into advertisers’ existing infrastructures while delivering significant performance gains through the authority of their media partners,” says Guillaume Echaudemaison, partner at Seventure Partners.
The fresh investment will help Mediads expand in the United States, the largest social advertising market, with about $120 billion spent each year. Mediads also plans to expand its presence in Europe and its premium media network for clients worldwide.
