The South Korean AI-based digital advertising solution startup PYLER has successfully secured 10.5 billion KRW in Series A funding. The round saw participation from notable investors such as Hyundai Investment Partners, QUAD Ventures, HANSAE YES24 PARTNERS, Helio Investment, and the Gyeonggi Creative Economy Innovation Center(Gyeonggi CCEI). PYLER has been lauded for its advanced video analysis technology and its solutions for brand protection, leading to this significant investment.

Jaeho Oh, CEO of PYLER, commented, “Following our Series A funding last July, we completed a multi-closing due to the sustained interest of institutional investors.”

PYLER operates ‘AiD,’ an AI-based solution that analyzes the context in which video ads are placed. AiD is designed to prevent advertisements from being shown alongside inappropriate content, such as adult material, hate speech, fraudulent activities, and pseudo-religious content, thus protecting the advertiser’s brand image.

“A staggering 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. To watch all the videos uploaded in a single day would take 82 years. Our aim is to tackle this overwhelming volume with AI,” explained representatives from PYLER.

AiD performs content filtering for placed ads, categorizing them into various sections like ‘Gossip, Issues, Sexual, Politics, Religion, Hate, International, User-defined,’ followed by meticulous monitoring. If inappropriate ad placements are identified, they are immediately blocked, and ads are matched with videos that align with the advertiser’s brand context as per their request.

Acknowledged for its technical expertise, PYLER had its paper on proprietary video search technology published at the prestigious CVPR (Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition) in 2023. It also received an award at the ICCV (International Conference on Computer Vision), and has secured a large number of major clients, both globally and within Korea.

“With this latest round of funding, we aim to enhance our model development capabilities and attract more advertisers,” said Jaeho Oh, CEO of PYLER. “Our goal is to establish PYLER as a premier video understanding enterprise and a leading brand safety startup in Korea.”