European video ad tech company Teads has raised $47 million to expand into Asia

Teads, the France-based video ad tech company, has raised $47 million in new debt financing to fund an expansion into Asia.

The company says in a press release it also wants to use the new financing to acquire ad tech companies to "reinforce Teads' leading position in the video advertising industry."

Teads is known as the inventor of the outstream video advertising unit - video ad formats that appear within the content of an article and only autoplay when the ad is viewable on screen.

Outstream ad units are favored by publishers and ad buyers because they open up more highly prized video ad inventory (because they can appear anywhere on a page, not just within a standard video player), they can be bought programmatically using automated technology rather than having to go direct to a sales team, and they tend to be less annoying for the user than pre-roll or mid-roll ad formats.

US video ad spend is estimated to increase 28.5% year-on-year to $9.84 billion in 2016, according to eMarketer.

Teads says it already has a foothold in Japan and is expanding to south-east Asia and China in 2017. The company has hired the former president at media buying agency MEC China, Christian Guinot, to lead its Asia expansion. He will be based in a new office in Singapore.

In the release, Teads says it has been profitable for the past four years. Business Insider estimated earlier this year Teads generated more than $140 million in net revenue in 2015. The firm has around 450 employees.

The new debt financing was raised by a syndicate of banks including BNPP, Bank of China, HSBC, Banque Palatine, and BPI.