• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, July 31, 2015

Integral Ad Science, a digital ad measurement firm, on Friday announced it has closed a $27 million round of funding. The company also announced it has received a debt facility of $40 million, meaning the measurement and ad fraud-fighting firm now has a fresh $67 million to work with.

The round of funding was led by Sapphire Ventures. Cross Creek Advisors also participated, as did existing investors August Capital, Pelion Venture Partners and Atlas Ventures. The $40 million debt facility came from Silicon Valley Bank.

“The expertise in marketing tech that Sapphire Ventures brings to the table makes this partnerships especially exciting for us,” stated Scott Knoll, CEO of Integral. Sapphire Ventures has invested in Criteo, Exact Target, Krux, Marin Software, OpenX, Tremor Video and others.

Integral has established itself as a leader in the ad measurement and ad fraud prevention spaces, particularly among programmatic advertisers. At a recent OMMA Art & Science conference in Los Angeles, James Green, CEO of Magnetic, called Integral Ad Science one of the “big three” fraud verification firms, along with Moat and DoubleVerify.

Integral claims to have been profitable for the past three years. Additionally, the company doubled its headcount in 2014 and said Friday it plans to do so once again by the end of 2015. 

Nino Marakovic, CEO and managing director of Sapphire Ventures, will be joining Integral’s board. He said in a prepared statement: “In today’s digital age, the problem isn’t only attribution of ad spend, but also the quality of each impression.”

Quality is a legitimate concern among marketers -- and for good reason. Viewability rates are still hovering around 50%, and ad fraud and bots have proven themselves to be an expensive opponent. Worldwide, advertisers could lose $6.3 billion to bots this year, per a study from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and White Ops. Here in the U.S., mobile ad fraud alone could cost U.S. advertisers nearly $1 billion this year, according to a recent study from Forensiq.