Programmatic media company Exchange Lab has announced it has raised $8 million in funding from the Business Growth Fund in the UK, an independent investment company that is backed by Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS and Standard Chartered.

James Aitken, CEO and co-founder of The Exchange Lab, tells MiC the funds will be used to build out the company’s proprietary trading and intelligence platform called DataLab, which uses data to find audiences at the right time, across digital channels and devices at the most efficient price. The platform currently works with clients including Omnicom, Aegis and WPP.

In addition, he says the funds will help Exchange Lab, which recently opened offices in San Francisco, New York City and most recently Chicago, to accelerate its growth in the US as well as in Asia.

Aitken says he is expecting 2014 to be another year of growth for programmatic in Canada, with about 20 to 25% of all digital advertising being sold through the platform. That is up from what he expects to be 10 to 15% for 2013 and a big jump from 2 to 3% in 2012.