Ad tech company Basis Global Technologies plans to go public, looking to take advantage of a strong market for new stock offerings.

The Chicago-based company, which just changed its name from Centro, was founded 20 years ago by Shawn Riegsecker to help companies place digital advertising. (The company changed its name last week to Basis Global Technologies but also goes by Basis Technologies.)

Investor appetite for digital-advertising companies has been strong, with Viant, Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, Taboola, Outbrain and Innovid all going public in the past year.  

Riegsecker has talked about taking the company public for several years, especially after it made the transition from a service executing digital ad buys for customers to a subscription-software service that automates the work. The software has been the company’s growth engine, reflected by the recent name change.

Basis said it filed a prospectus confidentially with the Securities & Exchange Commission. It grew to more than $150 million in revenue last year and has been profitable. It has more than 700 employees.

Earlier this year, the company bought QuanticMind, a San Francisco-based startup that specializes in algorithms for search-engine keywords. 

The firm made the Crain's Chicago Business Best Places to Work list earlier this year.

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