Montreal programmatic advertising company District M raises $8 million

Montreal programmatic advertising company District M has raised an $8 million investment through Quebec’s Fonds de solidarité FTQ, which the digital technology firm will use to expand both domestically and internationally.
District M was founded in 2013 by five digital media experts to provide programmatic solutions for publishers and advertisers, and now employs 42 people in their offices in Montreal, Toronto and New York.
District M plans to double the size of its workforce within two years.
“We’re very pleased to have the Fonds de solidarité FTQ as a partner,” said District M CEO, Jean-François Côté. “Their support will allow us to forge ahead with our business plan and particularly, solidify our investments in technology and recruit talent to maximize our growth in Canada, the U.S. and abroad. One of the ways we’ll do this is by opening additional offices in the months ahead. While we’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past three years, we know we can take District M even further.”
Through its Canada-wide sales team, District M delivers over 1,200 campaigns per year for both national and local advertisers, with a customer base that includes Corus, Quebecor, The Weather Network, Ricardo and Yellow Pages in Canada, along with U.S. clients like Nasdaq, CBS, Reader’s Digest and eBay.
District M’s flagship product, called Boost, allows publishers to maximize online advertising revenues by monetizing all impressions generated by visitors.
Another technology developed by District M, called Header Bidding, allocates impressions to advertisers with the highest CPM (cost per thousand advertisement impressions).
District M’s proprietary DMP (digital monitoring products) combines impactful formats, like responsive skin and 360° video billboards, with data targeting “to target individuals based on their current interests and intentions”.
“Thanks to a dynamic, seasoned and innovative team, District M is well placed to capitalize on the growth in digital advertising,” said Alain Denis, Senior Vice-President, Innovation, at the Fonds de solidarité FTQ. “Although it was created just three years ago, the company has managed to acquire many prominent clients, showing that it is able to meet the needs of a rapidly emerging market.”
Quebec’s Fonds de solidarité FTQ is a development capital fund that channels the savings of Quebecers into investments in more than 2,600 companies, and manages $11.7 billion in net assets as of May 31, 2016, helping to create and protect 187,414 jobs.
District M was selected as Jury’s Favorite at the 2015 edition of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 and by the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) as one of the six most promising Canadian digital technology companies.
As anyone involved in the Ad Tech space knows, making money in the new field of programmatic advertising is challenging to say the least.
Last March, Toronto programmatic advertising company Chango was acquired by Rubicon Project Inc., a digital advertising company based in Playa Vista, California, in a deal valued at (U.S.) $122 million in cash and stock (mostly stock).