Mirriad Advertising (MIRI ) saw revenues in North America - the world’s largest market for advertising - grow significantly by 182% to £0.884m in FY21 despite the continuing impact of COVID-19.
As Mirriad continued to execute its growth strategy over the period, operating losses widened as a result to £12m from £9.1m in FY20, while cash consumption rose to £10.6m. The in-content advertising firm broadly maintained year-on-year revenue at £2.0m in FY21.
Net assets decreased to £24.9m from £35.3m in FY20 as a result of the losses for the year while cash and cash equivalents at 31 December 2021 were £24.5m (2020: £35.4 million).
On the operational side, Mirriad saw a significant increase in its overall supply partners, and the company now has access to content from 46 content partners globally, it reported today. The number of advertisers placing campaigns also more than doubled to 45 during the year.
In May 2021, Mirriad signed a multi-brand framework agreement with one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies following a successful trial of Mirriad’s patented technology to digitally insert the company’s brands into selected US-focused video content.
Post-period in February 2022, Mirriad announced that it was partnering with Canada’s largest TV and digital media conglomerate, and that a first campaign had already been launched. This partnership represented an important milestone for Mirriad in the Canadian market.
Stephan Beringer, CEO of Mirriad, hailed the “growing momentum” in Mirriad’s key North American market since the second half of 2021, stating that this is underlined by the new partnership in Canada and the “subsequent activation” around the Super Bowl in the US.
Data in 2022 provided by the marketing research firm, Nielsen, has stated that Mirriad’s US campaign revenues were up by over 800% in the 2021 holiday season compared to 2020.
In particular, the company’s in-content campaigns across leading channels, Hallmark and Lifetime, for large advertisers in the finance, cosmetics and food and beverage industries, respectively, delivered ‘outstanding results’ as evidenced from data provided by Nielsen.
Beyond this, several research studies reiterated by Mirriad within this morning’s statement have confirmed that in-content advertising reaches more people than conventional spot advertising with an average increase in reach of over 23% across seven campaigns tested.
A campaign was run in Japan for Fuji TV utilising Mirriad’s technology in February 2022; a further four projects are now in consideration amidst interest from wider sectors in-country.
Last month, the Company unveiled a series of new strategic hires including the US-based appointments of Matt Douglas as Head of Programmatic Partnerships, and Zac Reeder as Head of Studio Partnerships, while Adam Gilsenan became the new UK Head of Sales.
The emphasis of this strategic move was Mirriad’s ambitions for the North American market, which remains a key growth area as it represents the world’s largest advertising market.
Commenting, Stephan Beringer, CEO of Mirriad, said: “I am pleased with our progress in building the number and breadth of leading supply partners working with Mirriad. This sits alongside the fact we have significantly increased active relationships and campaigns run on the demand side with blue chip advertisers and the largest agency groups in the world.”
In terms of outlook, Mirriad said trading in the current year to December 2022 remains in line with current market expectations, with good momentum continuing, particularly in the US.
The company’s core objective is to accelerate the integration of its product in the linear and programmatic media ecosystem while establishing a new standard in the advertising industry.
Beringer said Mirriad’s strategy remains “very focused on driving adoption and integrating with the media buying ecosystem to make the inventory accessible to the entire market and to automate the transactions programmatically. As we build out against our key pillars, using our agreed KPIs as benchmarks, we will establish Mirriad as a standard and achieve scale.”
He acknowledged that as markets and budgets started their post pandemic recovery in 2021, “it became increasingly clear that brands and advertisers must prioritise diversification to ensure campaign success and relevancy with customers for meaningful business growth.”
With the simultaneous rise in connected TV and streaming services, the Board of Mirriad said it now expects to see further opportunities from growth sustained across these new platforms.
Beringer added: “Looking at 2022, Mirriad expects to capitalise on the significant opportunities in the North American market and our launch into the programmatic realm. We will also continue to nurture strong existing relationships in
Europe and manage the move away from a minimum revenue guarantee model with Tencent in China. The clear gains in impact and reach we can deliver, all whilst consistently being found to be viewers’ preferred format, are hugely significant in the context of increasing challenges for traditional ad formats.”
View from Vox
Ahead of its FY21 results published this morning, Mirriad unveiled some strategic hires in April 202 emphasising the scale of its ambitions for the key North American market while a new UK senior sales hire is expected to help maintain momentum in the domestic market.
A recent whitepaper published by the company highlighted the effectiveness of in-content advertising in spurring improved audience engagement and business growth for brands.
It seems consumers’ viewing habits are continuing to shift within the TV ad space. In the US, linear (traditional TV ad-break ads) impressions for the 18-49 age group declined by 49% in just five years and are forecasted to decline an additional 22% over the next two years.
In response to the findings, CEO, Beringer said the clear gains in reach and impact that Mirriad can deliver “are hugely significant at a time of change in the advertising industry.”
In fact, across all measured Mirriad campaigns, the company found that average consumption rose 16 percentage points (ppt), ad awareness increased by 27ppt, and spend rose by 15 ppt.
Notably, the results demonstrate that in-content advertising can not only be a very effective way to reach and engage consumers, but that it can also prompt consumer purchases too.
Beringer believes this is only the beginning - he states that with the rise of connected TV and streaming services, investors can expect to see further digital growth across new platforms.
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