The mobile advertising market is currently estimated to be just under $300B per year and will more than double in size to reach $650B by 2030. Increased use of phones fueled by new mechanisms for socialization and communication combined with increased smartphone penetration globally are leading brand advertisers to rush to understand how to meaningfully engage with their target consumers on their phones. Adludio is an AI and data science-powered end-to-end platform that allows brands to create engaging mobile ad campaigns that are performance-optimized in less than 2 days. Brands can ensure they have high-performing placements with optimized bids and creatives from one place. Adludi’s next iteration of the platform will include the ability to fully automate the creative generation process and delivery. The company, founded in 2015, currently works with small of the world’s leading brands across a broad range of verticals including Gucci, Netflix, Hermes, Ford, Emirates. and Estee Lauder.
London TechWatch caught up with Adludio CEO Paul Coggins to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Mercia Investment, which invested £2M from its Northern Venture Capital Trust for Series B funding. This brings its total investment in us to £6M.
Tell us about your product or service.
Adludio is an AI-driven technology company that delivers premium mobile advertising. Our platform utilises the most advanced Deep Learning technologies to optimise client campaigns across all aspects of the advertising process. It algorithmically-ranks inventory to ensure campaigns appear in the right place to achieve specific KPIs and increases media buying efficiency by budget pacing to maximise revenue. In terms of the creative, our engine is powered by Computer Vision (CV), Neural Networks and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand with complete accuracy the way an individual consumer responds to all aspects of an ad from the position of objects and text to background and foreground colours. This allows our platform to continuously optimise campaigns and ensure that consumers are presented with the perfect combination of design variables.
In this new attention-driven era of advertising, the creative is ultimately what is going to captivate consumers. With these unique AI-led capabilities, we are providing our clients with the best-performing ad creative, but also the unique insight as to why this level of performance was possible.
What inspired the start of Adludio?
The past few years have solidified mobile advertising as a stable source of revenue, being the primary means of consuming digital content. This has led to fierce competition as brands in all industries look to win consumer hearts and minds. As a result, many have taken a ‘spray and pray’ approach, whereby they focus on sending out an advertising campaign to as wide an audience as possible in the hope it will reach the right prospect. With no real thought, creativity or analysis behind it. Other brands have gone for a more sophisticated method that hones in on data to try to ensure they’re reaching the right consumers but with no proper consideration for the creative and what ad iteration would be best received by an individual. As a result, many campaigns are boring, static and uninspiring.
We believe that the brands that truly understand the relationship between their mobile creative, and the levels of consumer attention that this can sustain, will be the ones that prosper during a challenging period for advertising. More than this, standard metrics simply no longer cut it. Brands need to understand in detail exactly how, where, and when users are engaging with their ads, so they can make more informed decisions to increase engagement.
That is why Adludio’s technology was designed to support beautiful, highly engaging, and interactive ads on mobile, informed by data.
How is it different?
Our platform utilises the most advanced Deep Learning technologies to optimise client campaigns across all aspects of the advertising process. The breadth and depth of the techniques we use and the resulting insights are unparalleled in the digital media space, guaranteeing clients the best-performing ad creative and the greatest return on investment.
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
With offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, and Chicago, we are defining the next generation of mobile brand solutions in North America and EMEA.
The opportunity to consolidate our position is particularly great in the US, where in the face of continued economic uncertainty for the adtech industry we achieved 50% growth in 2022 and where the mobile ad spend market is expected to reach $355bn in 2023. Having produced advanced mobile creative for major brands including Ford, Land Rover Jaguar, Estée Lauder, Nike, Adidas and Microsoft, Mercia’s investment will see us capitalise on this growth and help even more US marketers win the battle for brand attention.
What’s your business model?
AI-powered mobile advertising platform.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
I think there has already been a substantial economic downturn. What we are now doing is preparing for what we expect to be a strong bounce back in certain markets, particularly the US.
Innovation always flourishes in difficult conditions, and we like to think that our focus on delivering exceptional value, brilliant creative and innovative AI-driven solutions positions us perfectly for the economic rebound.
What was the funding process like?
Capital markets are currently constrained, but excellence and innovation will always win out. We have excellent investors in Mercia, which is committed to our long-term success and is investing in the long-term value we are delivering.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
We decided not to offer this investment opportunity outside of our existing investors, so the process was light and the challenges minimal.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the cheque?
Our sophisticated and unique combination of creative, media, and AI is pushing the boundaries of what is possible to produce next-generation mobile advertising for brands that want to future-proof their campaigns.
Martijn Kleibergen of Mercia said: “With stricter privacy rules, relying on ‘cookies’ to deliver targeted advertising is no longer a viable option. Adludio combines strong creative campaigns with algorithms that optimise campaigns in real time to engage consumers without using personal data. This investment will enable it to continue its growth in the US and expand its client base with the launch of its new self-service platform.”
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
With this additional investment from Mercia, the new version of our platform, due to be launched in 2024, will fully automate many of its processes and offer customers a one-stop shop for mobile advertising. Powered by AI and data science, and delivering everything from creative production, to unique campaign insights, as well as media buying and targeting, Our new platform will provide brands and agencies the unique chance to translate user attention into profit.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Firstly, it is best to plan well in advance so as not to be in that position. While this was not the case for us this time, my previous experience has told me that closing a round usually takes months longer than initially planned. If that runway is looking short, do whatever is commercially viable to extend it while also looking at less obvious forms of financing.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Focusing on our US revenue and delivering on our AI platform.
What is your favourite restaurant in London?
Any traditional pub serving a fantastic Sunday roast dinner at a reasonable price.
