A DIGITAL agency which helps clients outsmart rivals on Google has secured £2.5 million investment.

Brighton based Intelligent Positioning will use the funding for its software platform, Pi Datametrics.

The funding boost is the latest in a remarkable run of digital success stories from a trio of companies which all once shared a small working space in Brighton together.

Intelligent Positioning, Brandwatch and DC Storm (now Rakuten Marketing) all started out at Brighton Media Centre in The Lanes.

Brandwatch has gone on to become the world leading social media monitoring tech company, raising a total of £42 million over three venture capital funding rounds.

DC Storm, which pioneered a solution to online advert measurement, was snapped up by e-commerce giant Rakuten Marketing in 2014.

Intelligent Position's funding comes from UK based Mercia Technologies, a leading investor in UK technology.

It received an initial investment from Mercia Fund Management in 2015.

Since then, Pi Datametrics has expanded its team to 40 people with blue chip clients including AXA IM, Invesco, L’Oréal, River Island, Waterstones, M&S, Clarks, and Harrods.

It has plans to rapidly expand and grow - with an ambition to double the headcount over the next 12 months.

Pi Datametrics is an online analytics platform that marketing managers can use to see the performance - as well as the performance of their competitors - in search engines.

Clients can use this intelligence to perform, better, amend their website, increase traffic and increase sales.

The platform has rich pool of data at its disposal going back to 2007, with more than 16 billion results stored, growing by half a million each day.

Sam Silverwood-Cope, director and co-founder of Intelligent Positioning/ Pi Datametrics, said: "We're looking to gain rapid growth and expansion over the next few years. I'm sure there will be another round of investment at some point, but at the moment we're extremely happy with what we've got."

On the company's early days in Brighton Media Centre alongside Brandwatch and DC Storm, Sam added: "We were just a few geeks with furrowed brows doing tech data from a little office. We all used to drink in the Hop Poles together.

"It's nice that we're all following the same path and looking to the US."

Dr Mark Payton, chief executive of Mercia Technologies, added: “Intelligent Positioning is the perfect example of an ‘emerging star’ from our portfolio, having made significant progress since initial, early stage investment.

“With SEO monitoring looking set to become amongst the most disruptive markets of 2016, we look forward to seeing what the next year holds.”