Advertisement

We'll Continue To Provide Latest Tech While Expanding In The Market: Ankit Oberoi, AdPushup

In an interview with BW Disrupt, Ankit Oberoi, CEO & Founder, AdPushup, spoke about the company, competitors, USP and more

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every smaller to larger businesses round the globe. Every sector is bound to go online as per requirements, but there are some companies that have been making great progress through the digital platforms as well. AdPushup is one of those Revenue Optimization Platform that clocked 97% ARR growth from $ 30M in 2020 to $ 59M in 2021 and added more than 80 enterprise clients.

In an interview with BW Businessworld, CEO & Co-Founder of AdPushup, Ankit Oberoi spoke about how the company would continue to provide latest Tech while expanding in the market.

Brief us about your company, its business model and operations.

AdPushup is a B2B SaaS global market leader in the advertising technology ecosystem. Incorporated in 2014, the company’s headquarter is located in Delaware, USA. AdPushup is a leading one stop revenue optimization platform that helps publishers to boost their ad revenue using automated A/B testing, header bidding, innovative ad formats, and AdBlock recovery.

AdPushup was founded by Ankit Oberoi with a simple idea: while A/B testing was becoming popular, no one was using it to optimize publisher-side ad layouts. Our founder built and launched a prototype to get proof-of-concept, which resulted in double-digit revenue growth for our first publishers. Since its inception, the company has recorded phenomenal growth both in terms of revenue and product enhancement.

AdPushup has continuously innovated and added new products such as header bidding, ad refresh, and AdBlock monetization to its portfolio. With a fully-managed service model and personalized support, the mission is to empower ad-supported web publishers and help keep the world's information free and accessible.

The platform currently optimizes billions of ad impressions every month for 300+ websites globally, including brands like CNET, SPIN, NDTV, PCMag, Mashable, and GSMArena amongst others.

AdPushup is a Google Certified Publishing Partner (GCPP), a certification that endorses the company’s track record of delivering customer success, offering expert consultation and superior support, and promoting a healthy advertising ecosystem. On the Supply side, AdPushup has formed strategic partnerships with top-tier ad tech companies such as Amazon, OpenX, Index Exchange, district m, Media.net, Rubicon Project, Pubmatic, and AppNexus.

Being a Microsoft Ventures-backed startup, AdPushup uses the Azure platform and its technology stack includes React JS, Redux, and Node.js. It uses Java, Couchbase, and MSSQL to process and optimize over 120 billion ad impressions annually.

The company is also a member of leading industry trade associations; Interactive Bureau of Advertising (IAB), Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), Digital Content Next (DCN) and Prebid.

What are the unique key points (USP) of your company?

· AdPushup gives access to 40+ ad networks; increased competition for the publisher’s ad inventory with access to premium demand from Google, Amazon, Xander, Index Exchange and Rubicon.

· AdPushup ensures improved page speed; it’s bundle size-reduction ensures that ads do not affect website core web vitals. Ensures minimised page latency with modular code generation, lazy loading and CDN-based delivery.

· Our platform provides better clickthrough-rates owing to reduced banner blindness for ad inventory

· It also provides a 360 degree reporting with easily identifiable metrics and in-depth analysis to fine-tune performance.

· We are also known for ad-block solutions; to earn back revenue lost to ad blockers with pro-user ad-reinsertion technology.

· Our close relationship with Google and deep understanding of their ad products such as AdSense, AdX, and GAM allow us to deliver quick and efficient policy compliance assistance.

· All our partners get a dedicated account manager; to assist with everything from the onboarding to providing everyday ad ops support and technical troubleshooting.

How are you different from the existing competitors?

We use machine learning-driven proprietary algorithms that allow us to optimize ad yields at the level of each user - technology that otherwise doesn't exist in the market. We have always focused on building software to solve problems. All the features including ad layout A/B testing, header bidding, and user-consent driven ad-block monetization are implemented using our self-service optimization platform with account managers for all accounts. We have systems that were built for scale - requiring virtually zero manual input - something that's allowed us to scale to 100 billion ad impressions annually without batting an eyelid. We have a number of engagement improvement products in our suite which has facilitated us to achieve this scale without compromising on the user experience; one of the distinguishing factors that sets us apart in the supply side ad-tech space. Our technological superiority has enabled us not only to strongly position ourselves but compete globally.

What is the monetization model?

AdPushup offers two pricing models: the first being SaaS, wherein the pricing tiers are based on the plan and the second being performance-based revenue share.

What challenges are you facing in running your business?

Given that ad tech is a very niche segment, Hiring the right talent is a challenge most companies face. The already frenzied ad tech hiring landscape is seeing a surge in the job openings, there are more jobs than the candidates in the market. We have several job openings with some really lucrative offers, but unfortunately, it is still getting difficult to find the suitable candidates to take up those roles.

Impact of the pandemic? How has been your customer's response so far post lockdown?

No industry has been untouched from the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Due to reduced consumer conversions, advertisers reduced their ad spends to preserve capital resulting in less revenue for publishers. However, the ever-resilient industry made a swift recovery.,

AdPushup clocked 97% ARR growth from $ 30M in 2020 to $ 59M in 2021 and added more than 80 enterprise clients. This growth rate is a testament to how the web publishing industry is embracing our ad revenue optimisation platform.

What are the traction details (achievements of the company)?

Since its inception, AdPushup has registered phenomenal growth, raised $632,000 in seed funding on the basis of their unique business model and early success. In 2016, AdPushup raised series-A funding led by Japan-based ad tech company, a Softbank subsidiary- Geniee, Inc.

Between the year 2016 and 2021, the company recorded an approximately 9500 % growth in ARR working with clients, establishing an annual revenue run rate of $10 million which snowballed into $59 million by the end of 2021. Last year alone, we added 80 clients while increasing the active client base by almost 50%. We currently work with 300+ websites and optimize billions of ad impressions every month.

These are some of the highlights from last year:

- AdPushup became a part of the Display Lumascape in January 2021. The company is listed under the ‘Publisher Tools’ category as we offer publishers a range of proprietary technologies, such as header bidding, ad layout testing, and ad block monetization, to make ad monetization easier.

- We officially became a part of the Prebid community. This has allowed us to participate on a much larger scale in the industry and help more publishers. Being an official member of Prebid, we aim to participate in the community more actively and contribute to the open-source project by releasing some of our features to the publisher community at large.

- AdPushup was ranked #19 on the Financial Times list of The Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies 2021.

- AdPushup was recognized as a great workplace by the Great Place to Work® Institute. The great work culture fostered by the management is primarily responsible for this accolade.

- This year we also hosted our first-ever women’s meetup. The idea here was to give a shoutout to all the women leaders in the ad tech industry. We also ended the year with another event focused on women in ad tech, which was more inclusive.

- We also launched our podcast, Publishing Out Loud, and blog interview series, AdPushup Insider.

How do you look at expansion?

Since our publishing partners and prospects are distributed evenly across the globe, we currently have a physical presence in the US and India, where our regional teams oversee activity in key markets including Americas, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. Expansion is one of the key focus area for this year- setting up offices in key target markets i.e. South East Asia and Middle east along with hiring across all key functions including engineering, sales, marketing, ad operations, and customer support to support our growing business.

What has been the biggest learning so far?

Learning about the different segments of the market and strategically choosing one of the sub segments, while consciously saying no to the others. This by far brought a lot of focus and clarity across the business.

What are your future plans, with respect to the Indian Market?

India is a very important market for us strategically. We have been one of the few companies which have brought the same level of technology to Indian customers at the same time as the western world gets it. We will continue to provide the latest tech to our Indian customers while rapidly expanding in the market during 2022.


Tags assigned to this article:
Ankit Oberoi AdPushup

Around The World

Advertisement