EntityX secures government 'Innovate UK' grant to build Advanced Brand Safety tool

EntityX wins Innovate UK research and development grant to develop Advanced Brand Safety tool combining meaning and sentiment

Pioneering semantic technology company, EntityX, has been chosen by Innovate UK to receive a significant government grant to develop their existing proprietary technology into a new “Advanced Brand Safety (ABS)”  tool for publishers.

Innovate UK recognised that ABS provides an innovative and effective solution to the limitations of current brand safety tools. Existing tools block many safe pages because certain, often ambiguous, keywords are found in the page text. Not only does this restrict publisher revenue, it also blocks pages that are highly relevant for BAME and minority communities. ABS addresses this by analysing meaning and sentiment.

Publishers can already use EntityX’s unique semantic tools to analyse their inventory, mapping pages to audiences, interests, needstates and cultures and creating more meaningful audience segments that increase yield. ABS brings together EntityX’s existing ability to determine meaning with newly developed sentiment analysis, using NLP and machine learning, to generate an accurate evaluation of brand safety.

EntityX aims to use this investment to support news and magazine publishers in the UK to more accurately categorise which pages are brand safe, unlocking inventory and revenue. In direct tests, EntityX has been able to identify the 15% of pages that have been incorrectly blocked by blunt keyword-based brand safety tools, EntityX anticipates that ABS will increase this level to 30% by Q2 2021.

Tim Flagg, CEO of EntityX said,

“EntityX already offers the most accurate way to analyse page content for both publishers and advertisers, this Innovate UK grant allows us to further develop our technology to solve specific challenges for our customers. Not only can ABS identify inventory that is currently being blocked incorrectly, improving yield for publishers, but it also identifies inventory that is highly relevant for target audiences, increasing Return on Ad Spend.”

This grant follows EntityX securing an investment round in 2020, and will further accelerate the development of EntityX’s core tools, as well as these more innovative and customised solutions.

Innovate UK Executive Chair Dr. Ian Campbell said:

“In these difficult times we have seen the best of British business innovation. The pandemic is not just a health emergency but one that impacts society and the economy. EntityX’s Advanced Brand Safety project, along with every initiative Innovate UK has supported through this fund, is an important step forward in driving sustainable economic development.”

Publishers wishing to benefit from the Innovate UK funded Advanced Brand Safety project are invited to contact us to be part of the pilot

About EntityX

EntityX empowers brands to target audiences using ‘meaning’. Harnessing powerful ‘Knowledge Graph’ and proprietary semantic tools, EntityX can more accurately understand the meaning of any web page. EntityX’s Knowledge Graph is a database of meaning that contains 73m entities and the 446m connections between them. EntityX uses this to identify the most relevant pages to advertise on, so brands can resonate with their target audiences. This deeper understanding of page meaning, combined with sentiment, also enables advanced brand safety. EntityX is working with brands and agencies to generate deeper audience insights, database segmentation and content optimisation, based on meaning.

Founded in 2019, EntityX is growing quickly and is uniquely positioned to benefit from the imminent demise of the third party cookie. EntityX offers advanced contextual targeting, leveraging technology beyond any of the existing players. EntityX is backed by industry veterans, including the former CMO of Grapeshot. The founding team comprises PhD level computer scientists, cognitive linguists, serial entrepreneurs and senior marketers with first hand experience of the challenges of targeting audiences. 

About Innovate UK

Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing up to £191 million to fund single and collaborative research and development projects as part of the Sustainable Innovation Fund over the next two years. The aim of these competitions is to help all sectors of the UK rebuild after the effects of COVID-19.

The Sustainable Innovation Fund is funding 1,103 projects, 1189 UK businesses and totalling over £130 million in support across the UK.