CivicScience launches digital advertising company

The venture has received initial funding of $15m and is backed by investors including Thomas Tull, founder of Legendary Entertainment, Jeff Wilke, former chief executive of worldwide consumer at Amazon, and The NPD Group.

The platform will use first-party data from the polling CivicScience conducts with 100 million survey respondents and work with advertisers and publishers to offer anonymised privacy-compliant ad targeting.

CivicScience has appointed Doug Lauretano as chief executive of the new company. Lauretano was most recently senior vice-president and general manager at Media.net and has also worked at Fortune, CNN and WSJ Digital Network.

As part of a new corporate structure, CivicScience has also promoted chief commercial officer Zachary Nippert to lead the market intelligence business, while John Dick remains chief executive of the CivicScience parent company, supporting both its new media and market intelligence business.

Wilke said: "Enabling [advertisers] to activate their marketing directly in a privacy-forward way, while supporting quality publishers, is a natural, exciting next step."