Gen-Z, Millennial Male Opps: Tonal lands $110m funding round amid significant ad spend increases (Score 19)

In September 2020, smart home gym Tonal raised $110m in a Series D funding round led by L Catterton, which also led the startup's $45m Series C round in April 2019. This new funding will go toward marketing, brand awareness, infrastructure scaling and better system content development. Obviously, this will result in a continuation of the ad spend increases described below. According to Crunchbase, this round brings Tonal's total (say "Tonal's total" five times fast) valuation to $200m.

CMO Christopher Stadler joined the company in May 2019; his responsibilities include brand and product marketing, PR and influencer marketing, retail and events.

According to iSpot, Tonal's 2020 national TV commercials targeted millennials and Gen-Z with a skew toward male sports enthusiasts, with top targeted shows including College Football, Impractical Jokers, truTV Top Funniest, Women's College Basketball and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. YTD, the company has spent approximately $2.8m on this channel, which it had not utilized by this point last year. Tonal started using national TV in Q4 2019, during which it spent around $908.6k.

Similarly, the company pretty much started utilizing digital display in October 2019; out of the $206.9k Adbeat estimates Tonal allocated toward this channel from September 2018-2020, 99.7% ($206.2k) was allocated from September 2019-2020. Most of the past year's spend went toward either video ads placed site direct ($97.3k) or via Other networks ($93.4k). The majority of site-direct placements were on yahoo.com ($26.3k), msnbc.com, nbcnews.com, go.com and espn.com; Other network placed ads onto site destinations such as yahoo.com ($75.6k), nbcsports.com, msn.com, go.com and telemundo.com.

The company's digital weights can replicate up to 200lbs of resistance, and its AI helps train users to strength train effectively. Its smart home gym products are in relatively high demand since consumers are looking for every way possible to work out from the safety of their homes amid the global pandemic. They are available on its website and at retail locations in CA, NJ, NY, TX, WA, MA and MN; since Tonal may invest in localized ad space around these areas, we tagged each market to this article.

Additionally, Magellan reports the company has aired 26 podcast ads within the past year; within the prior year, it only aired one.

Tonal's target demographic, which skews toward athletic men, consists primarily of Gen-Z and millennials, considering its sharp increase in digital display and podcast ads. To reach this audience, it likely also invests in digital channels such as OTT and/or paid social.

Agency & martech readers - New funding could easily give Tonal the freedom to outsource some work; keep the company on your radar for future work, especially as it grows its marketing team. The company will probably seek either PR (to build brand awareness) or digital analytics/social media management (to reach its young target demographic) services before reviewing creative and/or media.