What Mantis does

Mantis Solutions is a UK-based signal intelligence technology platform that provides AI-powered brand safety, contextual targeting, and content classification solutions for the open web advertising ecosystem. Founded in 2019 by Reach PLC, one of the world's largest publishers, Mantis was originally developed to address the limitations of blunt keyword-based blocking in brand safety tools. The company operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reach PLC, headquartered at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London.

Mantis' core technology combines IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding with proprietary video intelligence powered by Twelve Labs (Pegasus and Marengo models), enabling frame-by-frame video analysis and semantic text classification across ten languages. The platform offers a suite of products including Mantis Brand Safety (Red/Green/Amber classification), Mantis Dynamic Contextual Signals, Mantis Video, Mantis Curation (via Xandr), Mantis Attention (via Adnami), Mantis Sentinel monitoring, and Mantis Product & Retail Data for commerce media intelligence. The company claims 73% greater contextual precision than key competitors and reports customer outcomes including 20%+ increases in monetisable inventory and 42% average CTR improvements.

Mantis operates a managed-service, enterprise-focused go-to-market model with direct field sales targeting major publishers, advertisers, and agencies. Revenue is generated through a usage-based pricing model — cost per URL scanned — typically structured as multi-year contracts. Named enterprise customers include Nine (Australia), Immediate Media, LADbible, National World, Netmums, LIBER8, and ESI Media, primarily across news, parenting, and digital media verticals in the UK and a growing APAC presence following the September 2024 Nine partnership.

Name

Mantis

Legal name

Mantis Solutions

Website

https://mantissolutions.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2019

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Mantis Solutions is a UK-based AI-powered signal intelligence platform, wholly-owned by Reach PLC, that provides brand safety classification, contextual targeting, and video content analysis for enterprise publishers and advertisers across the open web.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Cost per URL Scanned: Mantis charges publishers on a cost per URL scanned basis, rather than by number of impressions. If Mantis sees a URL more than once (and the content is unchanged), the previous values are applied and no charge occurs.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Mantis is a signal intelligence technology platform that transforms publisher content, sentiment, and first-party data into dynamic signals for brand safety classification, contextual targeting, and video intelligence. Built on AI-powered Natural Language Understanding (IBM Watson) and proprietary video intelligence (Twelve Labs), the platform delivers frame-by-frame content analysis, Red/Green/Amber safety classifications, and activation-ready signals across DSPs, SSPs, and programmatic workflows for enterprise publishers and advertisers.

Product overview

Mantis is a signal intelligence technology platform built by Reach PLC for the open web advertising ecosystem. The unified platform combines multiple AI-powered modules: Mantis Brand Safety and Mantis Suitability Signals provide content classification; Mantis Dynamic Contextual Signals and Mantis Curation enable precision targeting; Mantis Video extends capabilities to video content; Mantis Carousel and Mantis Suggest Dashboard power content recommendations; Mantis Attention and Mantis Sentinel deliver measurement and monitoring; and Mantis Signals plus Mantis Product & Retail Data provide analytics and commerce intelligence. The platform transforms content, sentiment, and first-party data into dynamic signals for smarter advertising across video and the open web.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Mantis Contextual Targeting: AI-powered contextual targeting solution that reads entire pages using sentiment and emotional scoring
• Mantis Video
• Mantis Carousel
• Mantis Attention
• Mantis Curation
• Mantis Suitability Signals
• Mantis Dynamic Contextual Signals
• Mantis Sentinel
• Mantis Signals
• Mantis Product & Retail Data
• Mantis Bidder
• Mantis Suggest Dashboard

Products and services

• Mantis Video AI-powered video intelligence product that processes online video content frame-by-frame, generating detailed summaries of visuals, audio, speech, brands, entities, and narrative themes. Applies Red/Green/Amber brand safety classifications and contextual categories to enable publishers to classify, protect, and monetise video inventory at scale, including planned CTV applications.
• Mantis Brand Safety (Suitability Signals) AI-driven contextual brand safety solution that semantically understands text and media content to assess brand safety risk using a Red/Green/Amber classification system. Empowers publishers to unlock inventory incorrectly blocked by overzealous keyword tools while protecting advertiser reputations, with customisable settings per publisher section and per agency group.
• Mantis Dynamic Contextual Signals Natural Language Understanding AI product that ascertains the true context of a page and identifies potential brand risks, delivering 73% greater contextual precision than key competitors with 42% average CTR improvement. Replaces keyword-based contextual targeting with sentiment, emotion, and entity-level semantic understanding.
• Mantis Curation Contextual advertising curation product that builds targeted segments within the Xandr curation platform, combining Mantis page-level segments with Xandr's IP address and geolocation data for precise contextual ad delivery. Personal data processing is managed under the Transparency and Consent Framework.
• Mantis Attention Attention measurement product that analyses time-in-view, ad position, visibility, pixel coverage, and user engagement to provide publishers and brands with understanding of how audiences experience ads. Delivered in partnership with Adnami and supports smarter inventory optimisation decisions.
• Mantis Sentinel Monitoring tag product that provides full transparency over where ads actually run. Captures every URL an ad is served on, aggregates impressions at page level, and delivers brand safety insight through placement visibility and engagement signals.
• Mantis Carousel In-page content recommendation widget that suggests relevant articles to keep audiences engaged, improve session depth and dwell time, and drive traffic to other articles. Reaches millions of readers daily with approximately 21% active engagement rate (LADbible data).
• Mantis Bidder Contextual buying platform for advertisers operating on an IO (insertion order) basis, where Mantis takes control of delivery and performance using IP address, geolocation, and persistent identifiers via third-party DMPs for precise ad delivery.
• Mantis Suggest Dashboard Analytics dashboard that links page-level Mantis data with engagement metrics (dwell time, engagement, clicks) from Google Analytics or Amplitude to provide insights for content optimisation. Data remains within the dashboard and is not exportable.
• Mantis Signals Intelligence layer that transforms content, audience, and product data into structured signals for planning, activation, measurement, and analytics across media platforms. Combines contextual, brand safety, and product-level signals to build richer audience understanding for advertisers and publishers.
• Mantis Product & Retail Data Commerce media intelligence product that transforms commerce media, retailer feeds, and retail-level data into structured, activation-ready intelligence using advanced AI and large language models. Categorises millions of products across retailers, markets, and languages with brand, category, and product attribute enrichment.

Quantifiable outcome

• 20%+ increase in monetizable inventory for publishers
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers7 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration5 records

AI capability9 records

Feature9 records

Partnerships

Eleven partnerships are on record, tiered key, core, supporting and parent.

• National WorldkeyStrategic or Co-development Partner · 30 October 2024Strategic partnership with one of the UK's largest news publishers to enhance brand safety and contextual offering. The partnership helps unlock advertising revenue for National World while increasing access to brand-suitable inventory for advertisers. Mantis' AI-driven technology enables National World to significantly expand the volume of brand-suitable inventory.
• NetmumskeyStrategic or Co-development Partner · 8 October 2024Partnership with the trusted parenting community to deliver brand safety and hyper-targeted contextual solution. Netmums can now offer superior AI-powered contextual intelligence that understands and categorises sentiment and tone of web pages at scale, ensuring ads are placed in contextually relevant and brand suitable environments.
• LIBER8keyStrategic or Co-development Partner · 25 September 2024Partnership to launch the UK's first curated digital marketplace for women's sport. Mantis powers LIBER8 Curate with AI-driven contextual targeting technology to help brands access a highly curated marketplace of women's sports content programmatically at scale across premium publishers.
• Nine (Australia)keyStrategic or Co-development Partner · 4 September 2024Strategic partnership with Australian news giant Nine to deliver industry-leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions. The collaboration enables Nine to better protect advertiser reputations using Mantis' pioneering brand safety tools. Marks significant milestone in Mantis' continued expansion into the APAC region.
• Immediate MediakeyStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 July 2024Technology partnership with Immediate Media to offer contextual brand safety and targeting solution. Mantis' AI-driven contextual technology significantly increases volume of inventory available to Immediate's advertisers while providing bespoke contextual audiences applicable across all properties regardless of cookie availability.
• IBM WatsoncoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2019IBM Watson Natural Language Processing and text analytics powers Mantis' semantic content analysis. Mantis uses IBM's NLU machine learning to provide semantic detail to every article, analyzing the meaning of words and relationships between them. Mantis has opted out of IBM Watson AI model training use of their publishing partners data, focusing on fine-tuning their own Mantis models.
• Twelve Labs (Pegasus and Marengo)coreTechnology or IntegrationTwelve Labs provides video intelligence capabilities for Mantis Video, analyzing visual content, audio, speech, and on-screen text. The platform studies video frame-by-frame to produce highly accurate, in-depth summaries. Twelve Labs does not use customer video data to train its core foundational models.
• Xandr (Microsoft)coreTechnology or IntegrationMantis Curate builds targeted segments for contextual advertising within the Xandr curation platform, combining Mantis page-level segments with IP address and geolocation data for effective contextual ad delivery.
• AdnamisupportingTechnology or IntegrationAdnami delivers Mantis Attention measurement services, analyzing time-in-view, placement, share of page, visibility, and engagement to provide insights for content creation and optimisation.
• Google (BigQuery)supportingTechnology or IntegrationMantis uses Google's BigQuery service to compare standardised agency keyword blocklists with its own natural language understanding and contextual targeting solutions for research and analysis.
• Reach PLCparentOthersMantis was originally launched by Reach PLC in 2019 and remains part of the Reach group. Reach is one of the world's largest publishers and the creator of the Mantis signal intelligence technology.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/mantis-brand-safety

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles5 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Mantis