Digital advertising is entering a phase of profound questioning. For more than a decade, social platforms have imposed a logic based on algorithmic targeting, distribution power and optimization of advertising performance at scale. But as acquisition costs rise and audiences’ attention becomes fragmented, advertisers are now looking for something else: trust.
It is on this market development that Mediads is positioning itself. The French company, specializing in “social publishing”, announces a Seed fundraising of 3 million euros from Seventure Partners, 404 Ventures and several business angels.
Founded in 2022, by Alfred Cardinal and Stéphane Labrouche, the company is developing a platform allowing brands to amplify their advertising campaigns on social networks via premium media. The principle consists of distributing campaigns no longer solely from advertisers’ accounts, but through media brands that already have a relationship of trust with their audiences.
This approach, which Mediads describes as “social publishing”, is based on an idea that has become central to the attention economy: the broadcast context now influences advertising performance as much, if not more, than the message itself. According to data cited by the company, the Advertising Research Foundation estimates that 54% of attention depends on the broadcast context rather than the content alone.
The subject becomes strategic for advertisers. The advertising market is facing a gradual decline in campaign effectiveness despite ever-increasing budgets. Mediads cites in particular an Ipsos study according to which it would be necessary to invest eight times more than in 2012 to achieve an equivalent level of brand recognition. At the same time, distrust of brands is growing sharply in digital environments saturated with sponsored content.
Mediads seeks precisely to reintroduce a layer of credibility into this industrialized advertising mechanism. Its platform allows advertisers to keep their existing campaigns, their visuals, their tracking tools and their audiences, while only changing the campaign broadcaster. The objective is to improve performance thanks to the editorial authority of partner media.
The model is also of interest to media groups faced for several years with an increasing capture of advertising value by technological platforms. Mediads today brings together more than 250 exclusive media partners in France and internationally, including Media Figaro, CCM Benchmark, Brut, Euronews, Futura, Prisa Group and Ziff Davis.
For these publishers, the model allows them to monetize their trust capital without changing their editorial line or producing additional sponsored content. Mediads thus presents its approach as a mechanism for redistributing value between advertisers, platforms and media.
The company boasts an atypical trajectory in the European AdTech ecosystem. Bootstrapped since its creation and profitable from the outset, Mediads claims to have recorded 100% annual growth for three consecutive years. More than 500 advertisers have already used its platform since 2022 to optimize their social ads campaigns.
This fundraising should now allow the company to accelerate its international expansion, with a clear priority: the United States. Mediads already has initial commercial relays and strategic partnerships there, notably with Ziff Davis. The American market today represents the main center of gravity for global social advertising with around $120 billion in investments expected in 2025 according to figures cited by the company.
