Varanida is pleased to announce the acquisition of Secret Media, adding a new set of assets and technology to our ecosystem.

Secret Media Inc. was founded in 2014 by Frederic Montagnon and Julien Romanetto, two of our advisors. Their mission was to reconcile the needs of publishers and advertisers with the people using technology to block those ads. Frederic and Julien bring years of valuable experience in the advertising industry to Varanida. They previously founded Nomao and Overblog, and later created the group Ebuzzing before joining forces with Teads.

“How to respect users’ privacy while maintaining free access to content with an acceptable user experience (i.e. reducing ads pressure) is definitely the main challenge for the whole media industry,” said Frederic Montagnon. “We’ve been working on this for four years, and we’ve seen and tested a ton of solutions. Varanida is definitely the best I’ve seen in that time. We have developed pure technologies, while they designed a real new ecosystem and economy where users, publishers, and advertisers are all aligned and incentivised to find the best balance that will keep the Internet free and secure. We are more than happy to see both projects merging!”

Varanida and Secret Media both share a vision of reconciling advertisers with Internet users. Secret Media offered advertisers video ads that would run even with an ad blocker installed, while Varanida used blockchain technology to create a decentralized, fair, and transparent digital ecosystem. Both were aimed at helping advertisers deliver content, and publishers earn more revenue, while making the experience of online ads less intrusive for users.

“We want to help the market find a better way to provide free services and content while respecting privacy, data ownership, and online users’ experience,” Varanida CEO Anji Ismail said. “This has always been the positioning of Secret Media, but they have only built the relation with media brands, while we are building a committed community. Having both the community and the media onboard is the key to a complete offering and solution.”

For a startup like Varanida, adding these additional resources will rapidly accelerate business and partnership developments. Over the past four years, Secret Media has been in business with major premium media groups across the world, including NBC, Condé Nast, AOL, Rakuten, IAC, CNN, IBT, TF1 and Prisma.

Secret Media also has a validated patent that will help Varanida’s team with one of our first client’s Proof of Concepts, to be delivered in Q4 2018. You can read more about Secret Media’s vision and how it plays a role in the current industry issues at Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and TechCrunch.