Polar, the industry leader in social display advertising, announced it has changed its name to Nova, previously the operating name of its agency-focused business.
The new Nova banner will serve the company’s entire client base, including publishers, agencies, brands, ad tech platforms, CTV providers, and retail media.
Nova is also launching CTV and other new video formats that go beyond social display. The move is part of a larger strategy to expand the company’s creative automation platform, seeking to maximize the value of creative assets, particularly as advertisers face increasing challenges with data and targeting.
Lastly, Nova has recently received a significant investment from Fort Point Capital, a Boston-based private equity fund with experience investing in growing marketing and technology businesses.
Kunal Gupta, CEO and founder, said: “We pioneered the Social Display category, creating the technology for brands to run their best-performing social posts in the open web’s ad inventory.”
“Social Display continues to unlock huge performance gains for advertisers. Now, with this investment from Fort Point, we’re taking what we’ve learned from delivering over 75 billion ad impressions and using those insights to expand our platform of performance-based ad products,” he added.
Fort Point capital partner Brooke Ablon said: “We’re excited to partner with the Nova management team as they expand their Social Display products into a broader performance enhancement platform for advertisers. It’s more important than ever that advertisers see clear returns from their digital campaigns. Nova makes this possible through its growing portfolio of creative formats and automation tools.”
As part of the investment and corporate rebrand from Polar, Nova has promoted Matt Crenshaw to the role of president. Leah Malone continues in her role as global chief revenue officer.
Introducing Creative Automation for Video and CTV
Nova has launched the industry’s first scalable solution for creative automation with Connected TV. Building on its core technology, Nova can now convert a video asset or any video post on social media into a VAST-enabled ad to run online or on CTV.
On CTV Crenshaw added: “The cost of creative shouldn’t be a barrier to reaching audiences for the thousands of small to midsize advertisers. We’re providing more value out of what they have that’s already working with a cost effective extension of their social feeds into CTV and other video inventory.”
Mike Juhas, SVP, client and optimisation services of Digital Remedy, said: “We have a great partnership with Nova led with many campaigns with Nova’s creative formats that have seen tremendous success.”
“We’re excited as Nova pushes beyond social display into new directions offering our partners powerful creative solutions as part of Digital Remedy’s unmatched performance CTV and video solutions,” he added.