🦊/Companies

GumGum

Santa Monica, US · Founded 2008 · 544 employees on LinkedIn · 5 known investors

Find your way into GumGum

312 people in our graph share verified history with the GumGum team — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.

Stephanie Manningunlockedknows Marcus Startzel · together at Appnexus (overlapped)
×3knows the team · via US Navy
×6knows the team · via United States Naval Academy
×2knows the team · via Perot Systems (Acquired by Dell)

GumGum provides advertising technology that targets consumers based on their mindset or receptivity at the moment of ad placement, rather than demographic data alone. The company serves brands and agencies worldwide across digital advertising channels.

Also known as The Mindset Company

Founders & leadership

MSMarcus Startzel
Marcus StartzelinCEOMarcus Startzel is a nuclear engineer who has held CEO, President, and Chief Revenue Officer roles at multiple companies with several exits. He is Chairman and CEO of GumGum, an advertising technology platform that targets consumers based on receptivity at the moment of ad placement.

Investors · 5

Company profile

researched Aug 2026

GumGum is an advertising technology company that positions itself as "The Mindset Company," selling omnichannel media across connected TV (CTV), online video (OLV) and high-impact display formats. Its core proposition is identifying the moments when a given audience is most receptive to a message, rather than relying on audience identity alone. The company frames receptivity as a set of shifting states — high receptivity ("leaning in"), low receptivity ("distracted"), high intent ("actively searching") and selective receptivity ("leaning back") — and claims to detect these shifts in real time.

The product combines multiple decisioning signals, including an attention score, contextual signals, trending topics, first-party data, device and environment data, past performance signals, seasonal moments and audience segments, which are weighted to prioritize the impressions most likely to perform. Alongside media activation, GumGum offers adaptive ad creative formats, marketed with examples such as Hang Time, desktop skins, in-video squeezeback and Velocity, and publishes case studies, research and CTV-related resources.

The company also operates supply-side infrastructure, describing itself as a global omnichannel SSP with direct access to vetted, MFA-free (made-for-advertising-free) publisher inventory on the open web plus CTV supply.

Compiled by commissioned research from 1 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.

Key figures

latest reported
Markets servedJan 202519 markets
MFA-free publishers in networkJan 202540,000 publishers
Monthly impressionsJan 2025500,000,000,000 impressions/month
Monthly unique users reachedJan 20251,000,000,000 uniques/month
SSP ranking (Jounce global omnichannel SSPs)Jan 2025Top 15

Company-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.

Founder mafia

2 people who came through GumGum went on to found or lead other companies.

Competitors · 7

by search overlap
Stackadapt173 shared keywordsStackAdapt is a programmatic advertising platform that uses machine learning and data science to help marketers and advertisers reach consumers. The company serves advertisers and brands globally with automated ad buying technology.
Vibe113 shared keywordsVibe provides streaming TV (OTT/CTV) advertising software that lets performance marketers create, target, optimize, and measure ad campaigns across 500+ channels. It serves businesses of all sizes with AI optimization, audience targeting, creative tools, and integrations with platforms like Klaviyo, Shopify, and Google Analytics.
MNTN106 shared keywordsMNTN provides self-serve software for connected TV advertising that enables brands to run television ads and measure performance across conversions, revenue, and site visits. The platform targets companies seeking simplified TV ad management comparable to search and social advertising.
AdRoll105 shared keywordsAdRoll is a multichannel digital advertising platform that runs cross-channel ad campaigns, social advertising, and attribution for ecommerce and other marketers, using proprietary machine learning engines. It also offers AdRoll ABM (formerly RollWorks), an account-based marketing product for generating B2B pipeline through multi-channel advertising and go-to-market orchestration.
AdPushup97 shared keywordsAdPushup provides ad revenue optimization technology for web publishers, offering tools to test and optimize ad layouts, run header bidding auctions across demand partners, and recover revenue lost to ad blockers. It serves growing and independent online publishers with managed ad operations support, and is a Google Certified Publishing Partner.
Avenga91 shared keywordsAvenga provides software product engineering services to enterprises, delivering end-to-end platform development with AI-native delivery methods and outcome-focused execution across banking, retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, life sciences, gaming, automotive, media, and mobility sectors.
Criteo87 shared keywordsCriteo operates a commerce media platform that connects advertisers, retailers, and media owners to enable targeted advertising and retail media capabilities across the open internet. The platform uses AI-powered tools for shopper targeting, product recommendations, and performance optimization.

Companies competing with GumGum for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.

In the news

Research sources · 1

primary sources listed

1 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.

Frequently asked questions

What does GumGum do?
GumGum is an advertising technology company that targets ads by audience mindset across CTV, online video and high-impact display.
Who are GumGum's investors?
GumGum's investors include Atento Capital, Crosscut Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), NewView Capital, Upfront Ventures.
Where is GumGum headquartered?
GumGum is headquartered in Santa Monica, US.