Sidecar, an e-commerce marketing technology that programmatically connects retailers' products to the most relevant consumers, announced Friday that it has completed a Series B round of financing totaling $8 million.

Boston-based Ascent Venture Partners led the round, with Osage Venture Partners and other new and existing institutional and angel investors participating. Sidecar will use the funds to further develop technologies that optimize product advertising channels, which have seen a surge in growth and popularity in 2015 with the rollout of Google Shopping and Facebook Dynamic Products Ads. Sidecar will also make significant investments in sales and marketing to continue fueling growth and satisfying the demand for its award-winning marketing technology.

'In a very short period of time, Sidecar has clearly established itself as a true leader in programmatic, product-level advertising,' said Luke Burns, general partner at Ascent Venture Partners. 'As investment in product-level advertising continues to increase, Sidecar has tremendous growth potential, and we're thrilled to back Andre and the rest of the team in pursuing this opportunity.'

'We made the decision to raise this round of capital and bring Ascent Venture Partners on board because we saw the opportunity to scale our team and expand our technology quickly to keep pace with the rapidly accelerating demand for Sidecar's technology,' said Andre Golsorkhi, founder and CEO of Sidecar. 'Sidecar's growth is due in large part to our focus on creating technology that enhances product-level advertising campaigns, at a time when product ads are taking over e-commerce marketing. For both retailers and consumers, strategic product ads are the best and most efficient way to connect people with the most relevant products in a retailer's catalog. Our technology allows retailers to accomplish this with greater precision and frequency than ever before.'

The funding follows a year of tremendous growth and recognition for Sidecar. The company signed nearly three times as many new customers in 2015 compared to 2014, including Nuts.com, Bealls, Saint Bernard, and Adam and Eve. Sidecar more than doubled its employee base in 2015, was awarded the 2015 Start-up Technology Company of the Year at the PACT Enterprise Awards, and was also named a 2015 Gartner Cool Vendor.

About Sidecar
Sidecar is an e-commerce marketing technology that uses machine learning to solve the complex, data-intensive process of connecting consumers to relevant retail products, in all paid marketing channels where consumers shop. The intent-focused Sidecar technology takes relevance to the next level, enabling retailers to display the right product ads to the consumers most likely to purchase them, at the right moment.

Sidecar considers an average of 1.2 million data points each day to analyze and index every product in a retailer's catalog, to ensure profitable growth out of paid customer acquisition channels across all devices.

Retailers that use Sidecar drive millions of dollars of new, measurable revenue and save time and internal resources, while maximizing ROI and improving the conversion journey for customers. Brands like NewEgg, Nuts.com, GNC and Choxi count on Sidecar to optimize their product advertising campaigns. Sidecar retail customers average a 50% increase in year-over-year channel revenue and a simultaneous 10% decrease in cost of revenue.

About Ascent
Ascent Venture Partners (www.ascentvp.com) is dedicated to investing in innovation for the enterprise. In backing more than 100 early-stage, emerging technology companies since 1985, Ascent has remained committed to its mission of partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs striving to build innovative market leaders. Ascent's investments have yielded powerful results generating more than $10 billion in enterprise value, which speaks to the firm's deep knowledge, experience, commitment, and networks. The Ascent investment team manages six venture funds with total commitments of more than $500 million, and is located in Boston, Mass.