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Foresight backs Ad Signal with £3M investment to tackle content sustainability
- 28 May, 2025
Samir Rea, Tom Dunning, and Tom Toumazis MBE.
- Ad Signal provides tools to enable media and entertainment businesses to understand image,
video and audio content;
- Ad Signal’s products, some of which have patents pending, deliver significant digital storage
savings for customers;
- Foresight’s investment will enable the development of further tools and support commercial expansion.
UK: Foresight Group 'Foresight', a leading regional private equity and infrastructure investment manager, has announced a £3 million investment in Ad Signal Limited 'Ad Signal' or the 'Company', a provider of content intelligence for the media and entertainment industry.
Foresight’s investment will allow the Company to accelerate the rollout of new products and expand its commercial footprint, capitalising on growing demand from broadcasters, platforms and post-production houses seeking more efficient, cost-effective content management solutions.
To support these growth ambitions, Tom Toumazis MBE will join the team as Non-Executive Chair.
Tom brings a wealth of experience in the media and entertainment industry, as well as being
involved with several early-stage technology businesses.
Based in York, the Company was founded by Tom Dunning and Mike Duffy in 2018. Since then, it has experienced significant growth and broadened into a suite of proprietary tools designed to help customers remove duplicate content, stay compliant, and reduce digital storage needs. Improving digital sustainability is a core focus for Ad Signal, with its tools significantly lowering its customers’ storage requirements, providing associated carbon reduction.
Ad Signal works with major names including Sky, Clearcast and the Broadcasters Audience
Research Board.
Tom Dunning, Founder & CEO, Ad Signal, said: “This investment is a major milestone for Ad Signal and
a strong endorsement of the vision we've built over the last few years. With Foresight’s support, we can supercharge the development of our technology and bring new products to market faster. Watch this space - we are about to set a new standard for how content could be understood with a sustainability-focused approach.”
Samir Rea, Investment Manager at Foresight Group, commented: “We are delighted to partner with
Tom and the whole team at Ad Signal on what we believe will be an exciting journey. The combination
of a compelling commercial opportunity, whilst also lowering customers’ carbon requirements,
hopefully makes this a promising investment for Foresight.”
Tom Toumazis, Non-Executive Chair, Ad Signal, said: “What drew me to Ad Signal was the clarity of its mission and the industry-wide challenges it’s solving - ones I’ve faced first-hand throughout my career
in media. From improving how content is monetised to reducing the cost and environmental impact of storage, the team is tackling issues that matter commercially and sustainably. I’m excited to support
the business in its next phase of growth alongside Foresight Group.”
Founded in 1984, Foresight is a leading investment manager in real assets and capital for growth, operating across UK, Europe, and Australia. With decades of experience, Foresight offers investors access to attractive investment opportunities at the forefront of change. Foresight actively builds and grows investment solutions to support the energy transition, decarbonise industry, enhance nature recovery and realise the economic potential of ambitious companies. A constituent of the FTSE 250 index, Foresight’s diversified investment strategies combine financial and operational skillsets to maximise asset value and provide attractive returns to its investors. Its wide range of private and public funds is complemented with a variety of investment solutions designed for the retail market. Foresight is united by a shared commitment to build a sustainable future and grow thriving companies and economies.
At Ad Signal, we’ve created a range of unique, industry first SaaS products - for all content types - which solve long standing industry issues Our mission: solve the toughest media challenges smarter, more efficiently and sustainably. Our cutting-edge SaaS products optimise content understanding, management, distribution and archiving while reducing cost & carbon footprint and ensuring content is tracked with pinpoint accuracy.
In 2021, Ad Signal created The Clearcast Library (TCL) for Clearcast, which is now responsible for the clearance of all UK adverts. Our Match and Foresight products allow clients like Clearcast and Sky to automatically understand the differences in their content down to the millisecond and understand
the clearance impact of the content or differences.
