Radar Companies AdTech · Illinois
Radar · AdTech in Illinois

Best AdTech Companies in Illinois, United States

The 47 best AdTech companies in Illinois, United States in 2026, ranked by funding and momentum. Funding, investors, founders, valuation, tech stack and live signals. Top: ABCS Insights.

47companies tracked
$137.2Mdisclosed funding
0unicorns
10have raised

Ranked: Best AdTech companies in Illinois

#CompanyDisclosed fundingLast roundStageFounderFoundedTech stackPatents & IP focusRecent signals
1ABCS Insights
Cloud-based ad attribution analytics solutions provider
$50M18 mo agoSeries CJerome Shimizu
CEO
2020WordPressMySQLPHP+271 internship · 1 expansion
24C Insights
Cloud-based market intelligence solution across closed ecosystems
$32M118 mo agoAcquired201124 patents
AI-driven enterprise data analytics and classification for talent, product, and defense applications
3Dotomi
Marketing solutions harmonizing consumer engagement across paid, owned, and earned channels
$28M262 mo agoAcquired20039 patents
Secure identity management and collaborative user-driven data networking platforms
4StreamLayer
Video content management and monetization solutions provider
37Moat top 25%Patents top 33%Innovation top 34%News top 38%
All 10 signals ▾
Moattop 25%
Patentstop 33%
Innovationtop 34%
Newstop 38%
Talenttop 38%
Fundingtop 42%
Producttop 47%
Techbottom 46%
Globalbottom 31%
Marketbottom 25%
Moat: Editorial + unicorn rating 7/10 · IP moat: 24 patents
Patents: 24 patents matched (strict assignee match) · 17 filings since 2022 vs 7 in 2017-21
rank vs industry peers · Fliar Intelligence Index 37/100
$13M15 mo agoSeries AJohn Ganschow
Co-Founder
2018WebflowSentryWistia+1724 patents
Real-time interactive video streaming with dynamic overlay graphics and audience engagement
1 partnership
5AdYapper
Digital Advertising Optimisation
$7M133 mo agoSeries AElliot Hirsch
Founder & CEO
2013
6Tap.Me
Connecting pilots and passengers for unforgettable flight experiences since 1994
$5M173 mo agoAcqui-Hired200918 patents
Pressurized beverage container caps and dispensing hardware for tap-based drink systems
7Clearstream
Media buying platform focused on streaming video
$2M150 mo agoAcqui-Hired20112 patents
Online video advertising delivery and targeting system
8Kixer
Mobile App Recommendation Platform
$1M144 mo agoAcqui-HiredOmar Nicola
Founder & President
2014
9Adshift
AI-powered marketing platform optimizing user acquisition and maximizing return on investment
$650K125 mo agoDeadpooled2011

Top 11 AdTech companies in Illinois

#1
Series C · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2020 · 17 employees
$50Mraised

Cloud-based ad attribution analytics solutions provider. The platform offers an omnichannel view of ROAS, by understanding campaign impact on customers, purchases & others. The generated insights help businesses in optimizing campaigns, and sales.

LinkedIn Pulse recent public activity · Jul 2026
Audience: 2k LinkedIn followers — 5.7% of this cohort's audience
Activity: 1 expansions announced in 12 mo
Funding rounds
  • Feb 2025Series C$50M
Founders & team
Jerome ShimizuCEO
Investors
Emerging Ventures, Volition Capital
Tech stack
CloudflareCloudflare Bot ManagementCloudflare Browser InsightsCore-JsElementorElementor Cloud
#2
Series A · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2018 · 20 employees
$12.8Mraised

Video content management and monetization solutions provider. It offers technology solutions for video content and video monetization. It offers an audience engagement platform focused on streaming video that provides engagement between viewers, premium rights holders, and sponsors.

Fliar Intelligence Index™ 37how this company ranks against its industry peers
Moat
top 25%
Patents
top 33%
Innovation
top 34%
News
top 38%
Talent
top 38%
Funding
top 42%
Moat: Editorial + unicorn rating 7/10 · IP moat: 24 patents
Patents: 24 patents matched (strict assignee match) · 17 filings since 2022 vs 7 in 2017-21 · Latest publication 2025
Innovation: 24 patents (top 47% of patent-holders) · 17 filings since 2022 vs 7 in 2017-21 · 3 new-product events in 24 mo
Audience (LinkedIn): 744 LinkedIn followers
Activity (LinkedIn): 1 partnerships (incl. Curated.Media) announced in 12 mo
Funding rounds
  • May 2025Series A$1.8M
  • May 2025Conventional Debt
  • Oct 2024Conventional Debt
  • Oct 2024Series A$756K
Founders & team
John GanschowCo-FounderTim GanschowCo-Founder / Head Of Product Strategy
Investors
Las Vegas Sands, KB Partners
Tech stack
CdnjsCloudflareGoogle AnalyticsGoogle Font ApiGoogle Hosted LibrariesGoogle Workspace
#3
Acquired · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2011 · 282 employees
$31.6Mraised

4C Insights offers a cloud-based market intelligence solution across closed ecosystems. The company offers a technology that turns social data into actionable marketing intelligence. It is a hosted platform, which provides a SaaS application interface, requiring no infrastructure for its customers. The solution serves linear television, streaming video, digital commerce, and social media.

Funding rounds
  • Sep 2016Series C$26M
  • Feb 2015Conventional Debt
  • Jan 2014Series B$5M
  • Sep 2012Seed$650K
Investors
Jump Capital, Inovia Capital, Square 1 Bank, Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, Prime Ventures, SuRo Capital
Tech stack
DrupalPhpNginxSectigoHsts
#4
Acquired · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2003 · 160 employees
$27.5Mraised

Marketing solutions harmonizing consumer engagement across paid, owned, and earned channels. The company empowers marketers with the ability to create personalized experiences for each individual at scale. It provides a comprehensive view of potential buyers, enabling marketers to understand who they are, what they care about, and what they buy. With its solutions, marketers know what to say, when, where, how often, and how much to spend to engage any individual. The company enables marketers to connect media to the consumers that matter most to them, harmonizing engagement across paid, owned, and earned channels. It offers customer clean room, data services, messaging, loyalty, digital, retail media, and website solutions. The company helps identify high-value customers and stay with them. It unifies and cleanses first-party data and connects messages across email and digital media. The company offers cloud based platform, peoplecloud products, and solutions for various industries.

Funding rounds
  • Sep 2004Series A$10.5M
  • Series A$17M
Investors
Globespan Capital Partners, USVP, Velocity Equity Partners, Investor Growth Capital, Edventure Holdings, Cove Capital
#5
Series A · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2013 · 1 employees
$6.7Mraised

AdYapper optimizes the digital advertising efforts and generates real-time analytics across the entire ad buying ecosystem and centralize the data into one platform to identify wasted ad spend while providing direction on how best to reallocate the recovered ad spend to make in-flight campaign decisions. AdYapper makes advertising performance data actionable so advertisers can optimize, and increase the efficacy of, their ad buys. Headquartered in Chicago, AdYapper is backed by startup accelerator Techstars and KGC Capital.

Funding rounds
  • Jul 2015Series A$4.5M
  • May 2014Seed$1M
  • Sep 2013Seed$1.2M
Founders & team
Elliot HirschFounder & CEO
Investors
KGC Capital, BW Capital Partners, Strategic Angels, Techstars, Right Side Capital Management, KDWC Ventures
#6
Acqui-Hired · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2009 · 12 employees
$5.4Mraised

Connecting pilots and passengers for unforgettable flight experiences since 1994. It is an online platform that facilitates booking scenic flights and day trips with licensed pilots. With a wide selection of flight offerings, users can search for flights based on location and preferences. The platform connects individuals with vetted private and commercial pilots, ensuring safety and a personalized experience. It offers gift vouchers for various amounts, redeemable for any flight on the site. The booking process involves searching for a flight, selecting a date and time, and coordinating directly with the pilot after confirmation. The platform caters to both individual adventurers and groups seeking custom flight experiences. It also provides an opportunity for pilots to share their passion for flying and offset flight costs by connecting with passengers. The website offers pilot registration, login, search, cart, and secure payment options.

Funding rounds
  • Mar 2012Series C$3.2M
  • Dec 2011Series B$423.9K
  • May 2011Series B$1.5M
  • Sep 2010Series A$325K
Investors
I2A, HPA, Western Technology Investment, Great Oaks Venture Capital, FireStarter Fund, Washing Pond Ventures
#7
Acqui-Hired · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2011 · 28 employees
$1.5Mraised

Clearstream operates video advertising platform that provides advertisers and agencies to access ad inventory across various websites. Clearstream addresses the problem of accountability and transparency in tracking the placement of online video ads. Clearstream provides standardization with evaluation, auditing and reporting of video environments, including premium in-stream, in-banner, in-game, auto-play and below-fold placements. Also evaluates in-stream content for quality and contextual mapping. Clearstream partnered with pointroll, adtricity, vindico, Nielsen, Doubleclick, Sizmek among many others.

Funding rounds
  • Jan 2014Series A$1.5M
  • Dec 2011Conventional Debt$100K
Investors
Serra Ventures, Illinois Ventures, Newport Capital Group
#8
Acqui-Hired · Toluca, Illinois · founded 2014 · 6 employees
$1Mraised

Kixer is a mobile native advertising company which helps mobile developers generate revenue. The service charges customers based on the number of application installations rather than the rate of impressions or clicks. The customers include IGN, TMZ and E!Online to name a few.

Funding rounds
  • Jul 2014Seed$1M
Founders & team
Omar NicolaFounder & President
Investors
TenOneTen, Lowercase Capital
#9
Deadpooled · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2011 · 14 employees
$650Kraised

AI-powered marketing platform optimizing user acquisition and maximizing return on investment. It is a B2B SaaS platform that leverages real-time user behavior and predictive algorithms to drive measurable growth for mobile app marketing. The platform offers performance insights, attribution engine, fraud prevention, and user journey optimization. It empowers marketers to track and analyze ad performance, understand conversion sources, ensure user quality, and seamlessly integrate with ad tech partners. The platform enables data-driven decisions through deep commerce data and AI, providing real-time analytics to monitor campaign results and optimize strategies. It offers marketing measurement and ROI optimization, fraud prevention and ad spend protection, user journey and retention optimization, and omnichannel and partner data integration. The platform provides solutions for marketing, data & analytics, fraud prevention, incrementality, and deep linking. Capabilities include regaining iOS visibility, kickstarting app growth, increasing engagement, and maximizing ROAS.

Funding rounds
  • Feb 2016Seed$650K
Investors
Ellis Island Capital
#10
Deadpooled · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2010 · 3 employees
raised

Education Funding Partners provides an ad network to connect educational organizations and advertisers. Offers EFP adNet which helps the clients to find relevant, education-friendly ads from vetted national and local companies to generate revenue from their digital communication assets. Puts the power of national brand marketing resources to work for public education by linking selected brands and school districts.

Funding rounds
  • Sep 2016Seed
Investors
Abundant Venture Partners, Hilltop Venture Partners, 7wire Ventures, Gust
#11
Seed · Chicago, Illinois · founded 2013 · 3 employees
raised

Operator of an online digital advertising platform intended to create a responsive banner. The company's platform provides advertising campaigns for users that can be run on different devices, enabling advertisers to automatically optimize ads that are contextually relevant for the ad space, device and market without creating and managing multiple ads for the same message.

Founders & team
Stephen CorbyFounder & CEOShashank SharmaCo-Founder
Investors
Techstars, Right Side Capital Management, New Coast Ventures, Albatross Ventures

Funding & investor landscape

$137.2Mtotal disclosed funding
9companies funded
23disclosed rounds
0rounds last 90 days
Most active investors
Techstars3 rounds
Albatross Ventures2 rounds
Right Side Capital Management2 rounds
185 Ventures1 rounds
7wire Ventures1 rounds
Abundant Venture Partners1 rounds
BW Capital Partners1 rounds
Bridge Builder Ventures Group1 rounds
Cove Capital1 rounds
Edventure Holdings1 rounds

Notable founders

Jerome Shimizu
CEO · ABCS Insights
John Ganschow
Co-Founder · StreamLayer
Tim Ganschow
Co-Founder / Head Of Product Strategy · StreamLayer
Elliot Hirsch
Founder & CEO · AdYapper
Omar Nicola
Founder & President · Kixer
Stephen Corby
Founder & CEO · Specless
Shashank Sharma
Co-Founder · Specless
Prism market signals · United States · country-scoped Prism corpus, 11,245,633 docs

Market landscape — 10 sub-themes by coverage

Share of AdTech coverage by sub-theme.

Regulatory-risk over time rising

Funding & growth over time

funding rising · growth rising

Common questions

How many AdTech companies are there in Illinois, United States?
Radar tracks 47 indexable AdTech companies headquartered in Illinois, United States that meet our profile-completeness bar.
What is the total funding raised by AdTech companies in Illinois, United States?
The AdTech companies in Illinois, United States on this list have raised a combined $137.2M in disclosed equity funding across 9 funded companies.
Which is the highest-funded AdTech company in Illinois, United States?
ABCS Insights is the highest-funded AdTech company in Illinois, United States, with $50M in disclosed equity funding.
How many AdTech companies in Illinois, United States are funded?
9 of the 47 AdTech companies in Illinois, United States on this list have disclosed at least one equity funding round.
How many AdTech unicorns are there in Illinois, United States?
None of the AdTech companies in Illinois, United States on this list currently has a disclosed valuation of $1B or more.
Who are the top investors in Illinois, United States AdTech companies?
The most active investors in Illinois, United States AdTech companies on this list include Techstars, Albatross Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, 185 Ventures, 7wire Ventures.
Rohit KhannaTrends & Stories

Rohit lives in the feed. He covers what's moving right now — the funding rounds, launches and shifts breaking across the trade press — and ties them back to where the sector is heading.

Coming soon