DanAds, the leading provider of self-serve adtech, has been named as one of the finalists in the Tech Business Awards Sweden 2022. The winner will be announced at the Tech Awards Gala in Stockholm on March 22nd. Finalists are chosen based on the quality of their company culture, their respect for sustainability, positive growth and demonstrated results.

Alongside DanAds, other nominees include CGIT, Doconomy, Freja Eid, Kivra, Tobii, and Star Stable.

DanAds recently featured on exclusive list of the most promising Swedish tech startups that have reached significant valuation milestones, published by Tracxn. A technology-first platform, Tracxn helps investors discover start ups across the world and make better investment decisions.

DanAds recently completed a funding round that was was oversubscribed by several hundred percent. The company’s current valuation stands at SEK 778.5m (£64.39m), post-money, which is more than double the value compared to eight months ago.

Nb: this is a summary of an article originally published by Svenska Dagbladet on December 30th 2021. You can find the full article here. 

One employer hires hundreds of developers in Ukraine. Another provides twelve weeks of education to otherwise unqualified prospects and then employs them. Swedish companies are desperate for IT competence. “The jobs exist, the challenge is finding something you really like,” says programmer Fredrik Björeman.

For anyone clicking through a job-hunting website the trend is obvious: coding and programming represent a major talent gap. Those who make sure the government’s digital systems function, crack the code behind the next unicorn and build the next big thing in Sweden’s massive gaming market.

Johan Liljelund isn’t surprised. For two decades he has faced the shortage of IT talent in Sweden. And in his view, it’s only getting worse.

“Twenty years ago it was much easier to find people, and the relationship between skill and salary was completely different. Today you have to pay an extraordinarily high rate even for a developer who isn’t that talented.”

Liljelund is a board member at Swedish Software, an organisation for companies that own and develop software. He’s also the CTO and EVP at the adtech company DanAds. The company has around 150 employees and the head office is based in Stockholm.

Much of the company’s coding is done remotely. Today, DanAds contracts around 110 developers in Ukraine on a full-time basis.

“In Sweden it can take up to four months to find a developer. The former Soviet states have good, well-educated people and they are supported by the government which sees IT as a vital part of the country’s economy,” says Johan Liljelund.

He emphasises that it’s not a question of driving down wages, but rather that it’s not possible to find the right competence within Sweden. Furthermore, Johan is careful to give the developers in Ukraine a good deal.

“We want them to have a situation as close to the work life in Sweden as possible, for example with parental leave.”

The situation isn’t unique to Sweden – Johan has heard from industry colleagues in the US who also struggle to find talent. “It’s the same thing across the West. In Sweden we started hiring people in Poland and the Baltics, now we’re in Ukraine but even India and Vietnam are getting popular.”

You can read the rest of the article (in Swedish) here. 

DanAds, the market-leading provider of self-serve ad tech, is taking fast steps in the global advertising market, which is expected to reach over USD$760bn (£585bn) by 2025. The latest investment round, which ended in December, was oversubscribed by several hundred percent. The company is now valued at SEK 778.5m (£64.39m), post-money, which is more than double the value compared to eight months ago. With the new capital secured, DanAds aims for an IPO in the next 12-18 months.

DanAds has taken the do-it-yourself trend to the advertising industry through so-called self-serve advertising that connects ad sellers with advertisers regardless of size. The company already has several internationally renowned customers in the United States and the United Kingdom, including Tripadvisor, SoundCloud, Dish Media, The New York Post and The Washington Post. Now the company intends to continue its global expansion and raises SEK 123.5m (£10.21m) in its latest investment round that ended in December of 2021.

“What makes me happiest but which also shows the company we are building together is that about 70 of our employees chose to participate in this round and invest in the company. In my opinion, this is the strongest proof you as a company can get for your business idea. I am super proud that we have managed to build such a strong and committed team.” says Istvan Beres, CEO and co-founder of DanAds.

Self-serve advertising is predicted to fundamentally change the dynamics of the advertising market. So far this year alone, the total value of the ad bookings made through DanAds’ platforms has increased by 500%. Global demand for digital advertising space is growing massively, and constitutes a multi-billion market. The market is expected to grow from USD$374bn (£293bn) to USD$764bn (£578bn) by 2025. This growth is mainly attributed to increased internet use across the world and a growing demand for digital advertising*.

“DanAds has become synonymous with the do-it-yourself trend in the advertising world and is today dominant in its segment. Thanks to DanAds, a larger part of the advertising market is opened up for small and medium-sized companies that otherwise would not have had sufficient funds to advertise with the large publishers and content platforms. Considering that about 90% of Facebook’s revenue comes from self-serve, our clients are just getting started and the potential is massive.” says Anders Borg, DanAds’ chairman of the board. “We are confident that our model is working and our ambition is to reach a turnover of SEK 500 million (£41.4m) in 2024”, Anders continues.

Earlier this year, DanAds raised SEK 45m (£3.7m) in capital to accelerate its growth and the company was valued after the investment round at approximately SEK 370m (£30.6m). Since then, DanAds has continued its growth journey and in September, Joakim Lundberg, former head of Sweden at Klarna, joined DanAds in the role of Chief Commercial Officer. Prior to that, the company’s board was strengthened with former Finance Minister Anders Borg as chairman and new members Kristina Schauman and Sophia Spala.

DanAds works according to a digitally scalable business model, as a license and commission-based SaaS company that enables its customers to become more autonomous and increase their sales by automating their advertising sales.

*Digital Advertising Global Market Report 2021: COVID-19 Growth and Change, The Business Research Company

The Foundation for International Entrepreneurs in Sweden recognizes foreign-born entrepreneurial talent in Sweden each year since 2000, under the patronage of His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden.

This year the award “Pioneer of the Year” went to our very own CEO and Co-Founder, Istvan Beres. Born in Romania, Istvan founded his first company in Sweden while still a teenager.

From there he helped to turn a record store with two locations into a national chain with 25 locations at its peak, among numerous other ventures, including stints at CDON and United Influencers.

In 2013 Istvan co-founded DanAds with Peo Persson. As the world’s leading provider of self-serve advertising platforms, DanAds is helping to pave the way for a more transparent advertising ecosystem. Today the company represents 11 out of the world’s top 50 publishers (not including Asia).

Istvan collected the award “Pioneer of the Year” at the Regional Final Ceremony in Southern Sweden. Next month Istvan attends the National Final Ceremony at The Royal Palace in Stockholm, with His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf presenting the awards.

The 2021 AdExchanger Awards, a prestigious accolade in the media and ad-tech industry, were awarded last night at the Programmatic I/O event in New York. DanAds won the coveted title Best Publisher-Side Data Platform in recognition of the company’s work with leading publishers including The Washington Post, Hearst, The Atlantic, and News Corp.

DanAds was represented by Head of Growth US/LATAM Ryan Hotaling and Head of Enterprise Partnerships Paul Cassar, who collected the award.

“This is a fantastic recognition for the DanAds team and we’re honoured to receive this award,” says Istvan Beres, CEO and Co-Founder of DanAds. “Self-serve technology is here to stay and it’s time to democratize the advertising space. The purpose of DanAds is to provide an accessible and easy-to-set-up platform for any publisher looking to automate their ad sales with all the benefits that come with it. The growth in digital advertising is largely coming from SMEs looking to advertise their business. We want to make sure that our clients get the tools they need to get their fair share of that growth. Our end user for the platform is our clients, the publishers, meaning anybody with ad space to sell, whether it’s The Atlantic or Tripadvisor or Hearst Magazines.”

Both companies will gain trusted partnership status with each other as well as strengthen their overall offering to their publisher clients.

 

DanAds, the Stockholm-based and world-leading provider of self-serve advertising infrastructure, today announces its partnership with AdGreetz (www.adgreetz.com), the industry-leading ad-tech/martech personalisation platform. The partnership enables DanAds’ publisher clients to offer a customisable, scalable and white-labelled self-service platform for advertisers to purchase and manage personalised video and display ad campaigns.

 

As part of the partnership, both companies will gain ‘Trusted Partner’ status with each other and jointly strive to reinvent the $750B marketing industry making it more transparent, smarter, more personal, more activating and more profitable. By making DanAds’ self-serve platform available, AdGreetz will enable its clients to seamlessly book video and display advertising space and target millions of individual consumers with highly personalised, relevant ads.

 

Istvan Beres, CEO and co-founder of DanAds, comments: “We are incredibly excited to form this partnership with AdGreetz. By making our self-serve platform accessible to AdGreetz’s wide array of clients, they can more seamlessly and effectively buy and manage mass advertising campaigns that target millions of consumers, which remain relevant to each individual. Due to its effectiveness, this style of hyper-personalised advertising is becoming increasingly popular and we want to make it accessible to any brand or company that wishes to utilise it.”

 

Eric Frankel, CEO and co-founder of AdGreetz added: “Many of AdGreetz’s OTT platforms and publishing partners are in need of a self-serve advertising infrastructure white-labeled, customisable platform (like Facebook and Google). DanAds delivers on this much-needed tool. Together with AdGreetz’ personalization capabilities, the partnership will fill an existing void in digital advertising.”

 

About AdGreetz

AdGreetz (www.adgreetz.com) is the leading DCO+™ video personalisation platform disrupting the advertising space by empowering brands, agencies and ad platforms to revolutionise their marketing, build stronger relationships with customers and increase engagement and activation by producing and deploying thousands (or even millions) of hyper-personalised, relevant, data-driven, video and display ads and messages through 10-plus data sources across 26 channels. 

 

AdGreetz was founded in 2009 by CEO Eric Frankel and is based in Los Angeles, California. Among AdGreetz’s clients are some of the world’s leading tech, entertainment, automotive and food and beverage companies including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Nestlé, BMW and Pepsi. 

We are delighted to announce that DanAds has been nominated for the ExchangeWire Global Award: The Wires 2021. The Wires Global recognises the very best use of digital media, marketing and commerce, with a focus on ad tech and martech, across all aspects of media sales and media buying, celebrating use of technology, expertise, and innovation within the industry.
DanAds was nominated in the category Best New Product or Service: Sell Side.
The awards ceremony will take place at London Stadium on Thursday 4 November.

We are delighted to announce that DanAds has been named as an AdExchanger Awards Finalist 2021. The prestigious awards celebrate excellence in digital marketing and advertising. DanAds was nominated in the category Best Publisher-Side Data Platform. The winners will be announced at the annual AdExchanger Awards Gala taking place during PROGRAMMATIC I/O NY 2021.

Opera [NASDAQ: OPRA] has announced the launch of its self-serve advertising platform Opera Ad Manager, powered by DanAds, a customizable and scalable self-serve ad tech infrastructure for tier1 publishers. It is designed to create, manage, and report on digital advertising campaigns in one place allowing advertisers to reach customers in all phases of their journey from discovery to conversion.

Recently, Opera Ads proudly celebrated its two-year anniversary. Since its launch it has become a force to be reckoned with, reaching and engaging millions of Opera users worldwide with innovative, content-based ad experiences from Opera’s global inventory, across its portfolio of products and partner inventories.

Hundreds of millions of engaged users choose Opera products to lead their online lives. Consolidated financial results from the second quarter 2021 showed advertising revenue has increased 128% year-over-year, to $28.9 million, predominantly fueled by monetization growth within Opera News and mobile browsers. The standalone revenue for Opera News grew 442% year-over-year and 49% sequentially versus the first quarter of 2021.

Over the last two years, the Opera team has maintained a commitment to improving user experience by introducing innovative, feature-rich ad formats. As a result of these efforts, Opera is launching a self-serve advertising platform Opera Ad Manager powered by DanAds, a leading provider of self-serve technology. As a response to our advertisers’ needs, we made it seamless and efficient to tap into the Opera Network and reach an engaged target audience by offering an easy to use interface to access our inventory in the most transparent way.

Opera Ad Manager is a portal that offers individual businesses and service providers the opportunity to advertise to their ideal audience around the globe, leveraging an easy to use interface to access the scaled inventory of Opera’s trusted browsers and news apps in the most transparent way. The video introduction to Opera Ad Manager is available here.

As a response to our advertisers’ needs we have made it seamless and efficient to tap into the Opera Network and reach and engage target markets by self managing and optimizing marketing campaigns. Opera is now offering anyone the ability to buy and advertise with Opera making advertisers completely self-sufficient in their campaign execution. Opera is lowering the threshold for advertisers around the world by allowing access to it’s wide audience with even a moderate budget. This is a perfect fit for small and medium enterprises which are just about to start to advertise their businesses. Using state of the art self-serve tools makes the process of placing an ad simple, fully controllable at every stage and easily changeable to tune the campaign inline with its objectives.

“At Opera we are always looking for innovative technologies to be integrated in our products and extend our offering. The partnership between Opera Ads and DanAds allows for complete automation of all ad operations, saving time and effort, which in turn leads to an increase in campaign efficiency and, thus, maximizes the ROI of every ad dollar spent.” says Per Wetterdal, EVP Commercial.

There are a great number of successful and innovative providers of self-serve technology beyond the big two: Google and Facebook. DanAds is one of the leading independent providers of choice on the market and is known for providing publishers with their own customizable, scalable, self-serve platforms, allowing for the automation of all ad operations, sales, and creative management to increase revenue effectively. It is trusted by companies like Tripadvisor, Hearst Magazines, Bloomberg Media Group, The Atlantic, New York Post and Philips.

“We have been excited since day one of working together with Opera on the Opera Ad Manager. Our two companies have many similarities, being Scandinavian players on a truly global market and believing in the need for a transparent ecosystem. This is just the beginning of our partnership and we look forward to continue our set roadmap together”, says Istvan Beres, co-founder and CEO at DanAds.

By partnering with DanAds, Opera Ad Manager allows anyone to convey their message to the right audience, at the perfect time, in the most opportune place thanks to:

• Ease of use and freedom of choice: Starting a campaign has never been simpler thanks to the straight-forward and easily accessible platform. At every stage it is possible to view all available options and play with the variables. This freedom of choice is what makes self-service advertising so popular.
• Full control of campaigns: Manage your creatives, scheduling, spending and targeting with fully transparent results. From custom reporting and analytics for the campaigns visualized with online graphs and tables to the easy export options.
• Reach: All the necessary tools to reach millions of potential users around the globe are presented on the platform.

Opera is looking forward to continuing implementing technologies that not only allow brands to connect with large, highly-engaged audiences, but to target those audiences with precision. All with Opera, and its innovative features, at the core.

About Opera

Opera is a leading global web innovator with an engaged and growing base of hundreds of millions of monthly active users. Building on over 25 years of innovation that started with browser products, Opera is increasingly leveraging its brand as well as its massive and highly active user base in order to expand its offerings and business. Today, Opera offers users around the world a range of products and services that include PC and mobile browsers, the AI-powered newsreader Opera News, and recently launched fintech and classifieds apps. Opera is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange (OPRA).