Invested in Fringe81 Co., Ltd.

NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; President & CEO: Minoru Etoh) today announced its investment, through the investment fund it operates, in Fringe81 Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; President & CEO: Yuzuru Tanaka, hereinafter referred to as “Fringe81”), which commercializes a variety of ad technologies, including third party delivery, DMP, and tag management, all of which were planned and developed by Fringe81.

1.Overview of the investment

NTT DOCOMO Ventures, through the investment fund it operates, acquired shares of Fringe81 through a third-party allocation conducted by Fringe81.

2.Background

Among internet advertising markets, the smartphone advertising market has seen remarkable growth in recent years, and operational advertisements have a large share in the market. In this situation, advertisers are seeking marketing methods that allow them to publish advertisements more safely and reach a larger audience, and media companies managing smartphone media as well are seeking a variety of monetizing methods.
Following this trend, the ad technologies of Fringe81 have a high affinity for those of NTT Group companies including NTT DOCOMO in the area of media content, which is expected to contribute to this area.

D2C Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “D2C”), a joint venture of NTT DOCOMO, INC., Dentsu Inc., and NTT Advertising, Inc. and Fringe81 have determined that large-scale ad networks can be built early on by combining the high expertise and selling capacity in the mobile marketing field of D2C with the businesses development abilities and technical abilities of Fringe81 and have agreed on a comprehensive business tie-up to jointly develop and manage totally new ad networks.