Ad Fontes Gets Funds, Names Berens Head of Insights

Media bias intelligence specialist Ad Fontes Media has closed a $4.2m funding round, which it will use to fuel innovation in its solutions, and expand its team to 15 full-time core team members and 65 analysts. It has also appointed former IAB Editor-in-Chief Brad Berens as Head of Insights.

Ad Fontes rates news sources for reliability and impartiality via a Media Bias Chart which it claims unlocks the 'true value' of news audiences and determines when and how to advertise to them. The firm creates news content ratings with a team of human analysts with political views from across the spectrum, trained to look at the content of the news and score it according to Ad Fontes' methodology.

New funding has been led by Aion Ventures and the New Community Transformation Fund-Denver (NCTF-D), plus a number of industry investors. According to founder and CEO Vanessa Otero: 'The value of our latest funding round will soon become vividly apparent to our clients and advertisers, as we roll out enhancements to our most popular existing solutions such as Spanish language ratings. We will soon introduce new ones as well, including tools for brands to utilize our bias and reliability ratings on platforms like YouTube and Twitter'.

Berens is a long-time researcher at the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg, who most recently served as Editor-in-Chief for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. In addition to leading R&D and Insights at Ad Fontes Media, he also continues his role on its Board of Advisors. He will work closely with Otero and Chief Strategy Officer Lou Paskalis to begin providing advertisers with insights and research to support their brand and financial interests in news advertising.

Web site: www.adfontesmedia.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.