We look at five advertising technology vendors that have managed to join the prestigious $1bn tech startup club
The technology industry is now awash with so-called ‘unicorns’ – privately-held companies with a market valuation of US$1bn or more based on their fundraising activities.
According to the latest figures from CB Insights, there are now a record 143 unicorns, with a combined valuation of US$508bn.
Using CB’s figures, as well as insights from several financial investment portals over the past year, we’ve compiled this list of 5 adtech companies who’ve made it to this prestigious tech club, and what they’re doing to achieve such lofty heights.
Valuation: US$1.2bn
Total funding: $363.2m, last round conducted in April 2015
Established: 2007
Based: US
Similar companies: MediaMath, DataXu, RadiumOne
AppNexus delivers programmatic ad trading solutions for digital advertising. The US-based vendor was established by several entrepreneurs from the ad exchange technology industry including former executives from DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media. Investor backers include Microsoft, Venrock, Technology Crossover Ventures, First Round Capital, Mosaic co-founder Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.
The company claims to be the first to serve an impression via real-time auction, as well as to offer integrated buying, selling and ad serving capabilities in one platform. The as-a-service, open platform allows users to integrate self-developed tools connected via APIs to the core offering.
Headquartered in New York City with 19 global offices, AppNexus set up shop in Australia in March 2014.
In June, the company launched AppNexus Programmable Bidder, allowing agencies and brands to upload proprietary algorithms directly into its platform in order to better tailor and optimise programmatic digital buying using their own data.
Valuation: US$1bn
Total funding: $320.6m, last round September 2015
Established: 2007
Based: US
Similar companies:Flurry, Millennial Media, Lomark, Amobee Media Systems
InMobi operates a mobile advertising platform with an extensive range of ad formats, analytics and monetisation tools for app businesses. The company builds mobile-first customer engagement platforms that transform the economics of influencing global consumers.
Last November, InMobi launched its Audience Platform in the Australian market, which uses segmented data from 872 million unique users globally to better target advertising to consumers via mobile devices. The company also recently struck a partnership with consumer insights firm, Experian, to match mobile data with specific households for the benefit of brands.
Valuation: $1.17bn
Total funding : $123.5m, last round March 2015
Established: 2009
Based: US
Similar companies: Hootsuite, Spredfast, Sprout
Sprinklr is a social media management platform aimed at large enterprises. Features of its SIREn (Social Intent Revelation Engine) platform include social governance and account ownership, social workflow management, approvals across internal business/geographic units and scalable social conversation management across multiple social accounts and channels.
The vendor announced its Sprinklr Experience Cloud earlier this year, a platform aimed at connecting a brand’s various social touchpoints then provide data to marketers to further optimise customer interactions.
In June, Sprinklr made its seventh acquisition in 18 months, acquiring text analytics vendor, NewBrand. This followed the purchase of Brazilian social management vendor, Scup, in May.
Sprinklr was valued at $1bn in March after raising an addition $46m in funding.
Valuation: $1bn
Total funding: $229.9m, last round September 2014
Established: 2008
Based: Canada
Competitors: Sprinklr, Sprout Social, Salesforce Social Studio, AgoraPulse
Similarly to Sprinklr, HootSuite provides a social media management system. Core features include the ability to monitor social media interaction across various networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as custom analytics and data dashboard, giving multiple users the ability to collaborate on updating a company's social profile or schedule campaigns around messages.
In March, Hootsuite partnered with Stackla to allow its users to access Stackla’s content management tools within its platform.
Check out our interview with Hootsuite’s marketing leader here
Valuation: US$1bn
Total funding: $220m, last round May 2015
Established: 2004
Based: China
Panshi is an online and mobile advertising services vendors focused on China’s small and medium enterprises sector. Services include search engines, cloud-based network marketing portals and network marketing. At the higher end of town, the company is also offering Internet activity promotions, PR, media buying, market research and monitoring.
The group completed a US$200m round of series B funding in May, an investment injection that pushed its valuation to $1bn.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+: google.com/+CmoAu
Welcome to Launch Marketing Council’s new 3-part series focused on unlocking the secrets of launching brands, products and service by exploring real-life examples from Australia’s marketing elite, in conjunction with the independent agency Five by Five Global.
In early 2020, I had the pleasure of staying at the newly opened Fullerton Hotel in Sydney. It was on this trip I first became aware of the Fullerton’s commitment to brand storytelling.
If you’ve been around advertising long enough, you’ve probably seen (or written) a slide which says: “They won’t remember what you say, they’ll remember how you made them feel.” But it’s wrong. Our understanding of how emotion is used in advertising has been ill informed and poorly applied.
The launch of a new brand, or indeed a rebrand, is a transformation to be greeted with fanfare. So why is it that once the brand has launched, the brand execution phase can also be the moment at which you kill its creativity?
Well, the conversion can be increased by just using marketing, but in general if you are considering an example with Magento, then it is ...
Bob
How Remedy is using digital marketing and commerce to drive conversion
yo nice article
Bob
6 Ways to ramp up Social Media to Your Web Design
Thanks for sharing with us. I just loved your way of presentation. I enjoyed reading this .Thanks for sharing and keep writing. It is goo...
Nisha
Cancer Council: Finding the physical-virtual engagement balance post-COVID
yes AI should be a course so many People Use AI https://g-techsolutions.com...
M Abdullah Khan
Is AI on course to take over human creativity? - Modern creative - CMO Australia
Extremely informative. One should definitely go through the blog in order to know different aspects of the top retail technology.
Pooja Gupta
Donut King takes in-store marketing to the next digital level