27. Sharethrough: The largest "native" ad exchange
CEO: Dan Greenberg
Employees: 160
Estimated revenues: We believe around $30-$40 million, net.
Total venture funding: $28 million
Comment: The company operates a "native" ad exchange and is targeting annual revenue of $100 million by the end of the year. It is profitable.
26. Taykey: Supported by Google's Eric Schmidt
CEO: Amit Avner
Employees: 90
Estimated revenues: We estimate around $30 million
Total funding to date: $32 million
Comment: Taykey's latest funding round was led by Eric Schmidt's venture arm Innovation Endeavors. The company, which plugs its software into more than 50,000 social sources — such as YouTube, DailyMotion, and BuzzFeed — to provide insights to marketers on what is trending now for their desired audiences says it has grown revenue by 600% since January 2013. Avner told us he expects this triple digit growth to continue into 2015.
25. Socialbakers: A well-respected young CEO and huge client base
CEO: Jan Rezab
Employees: 330
Estimated revenues: Greater than $30 million.
Total venture funding: $34 million
Comment: Rezab was named one of Forbes' "30 under 30" in marketing and advertising earlier this year. His social media management and analytics company has more than 2,700 clients, and is considering the possibility of going public. Rezab says the Prague-based company has doubled in size every year "for a while now," and this year it is concentrating its efforts on US expansion.
24. Unruly: Benefiting from the shift of ad dollars from TV to digital video
CEO: Scott Button
Employees: 190
Estimated revenues: $42 million in 2014
Total venture funding: $25 million
Comment: The London-based video ad tech company increased revenue by 23% year on year, helped by the continued shift of ad dollars from TV to digital. Last year Unruly opened an APAC HQ in Singapore, and it launched new products including a programmatic media trading platform to guarantee the viewability of video ads, a skippable pre-roll ad format, and a native in-feed format.
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip Ad23. Sojern: Has 200 million travelers in its files
CEO: Mark Rabe
Employees: 180
Estimated revenues: $70 million, gross
Funding: $42.5m
Comments: Sojern has an unusual niche in ad tech: it specializes in ad targeting for the travel industry. The company claims to be able to reach 200 million traveler profiles in its database. Sojern opened an office in London about a year and a half ago under managing director Stephen Taylor. This year the company opened offices in Singapore and Dubai (it previously had sites in San Francisco, Omaha and New York.)
22. Kenshoo: Plans to IPO in the US in 2015
CEO: Yoav Izhar-Prato
Employees: 500
Estimated revenues: ~$50 million to $100 million in 2014.
Total venture funding: $49.7 million
Comment: The Tel Aviv-based company handles tens of billions of dollars worth of search, local, and social media advertising. It is one of Google's biggest clients in terms of buying shopping ads. Its chief executive said it is planning on a US IPO in 2015, that could value the company at $750 million, adding in an interview with Bloomberg "it's healthy for us to be a public company."
21. Tapjoy: App developers' best friend
CEO: Steve Wadsworth
Employees: 275
Estimated revenues: ~$100 million, around the same as in 2011.
Total venture funding: $65 million
Comment: Tapjoy helps app developers make money through its advertising platform. Its software is embedded in more than 270,000 apps and it reaches more than 520 million monthly active users. Last year Tapjoy acquired Korean startup 5Rocks, as part of its aims to become a one-stop-shop for mobile app developers.
20. Kargo: $0 venture funding
CEO: Harry Kargman
Employees: 120
Estimated revenues: We estimate greater than $80 million.
Total venture funding: $0
Comment: Unusually for an ad tech company, Kargo has raised zero venture funding to date, which places it in a prime position for outside investor interest. Kargo has built its business on a publisher platform that combines content with native brand advertising from the likes of McDonald's, AT&T, Unilever — 150 customers in total. It began trading on mobile viewability last year, guaranteeing advertisers 80% in-view ads or their money back.
19. OpenX: Expect an IPO very soon
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip Ad18. Sprinklr: Hugely ambitious and a likely IPO candidate.
CEO: Ragy Thomas
Employees: 800+
Estimated revenues: Believed to be aiming for $100 million this year
Total venture funding: $123.5 million
Comments: Last year Sprinklr — an enterprise social media management company — acquired TBG Digital, one of Facebook's largest ad-buying clients. Combined, the companies process more than $100 million in annual media spend for clients including Microsoft, Vodafone, Intel, and Dell. Sprinklr has also acquired four companies since. A source told Business Insider in April 2014 that Sprinklr was planning an IPO, and CEO Thomas is known to want to build a "$10 billion company."
17. Centro: Helping smaller advertisers get into programmatic
CEO: Shawn Riegsecker
Employees: 600
Estimated revenues: Projected ~$100 million this year, according to industry sources
Total venture funding: $22.5 million
Comment: Centro's advertising platform is used by advertising agencies to manage the workflow of their digital campaigns. The company launched a demand-side platform in May, which claims to be mobile-first. The Centro DSP was specifically designed to meet the needs of smaller advertisers that find it hard to develop relationships with the bigger demand-side platforms due to minimum spends and set-up fees. Centro claims to have 2,500 customers and sources tell us the company is looking to raise more funding this year.
16. DataXu: Powered by MIT scientists, and aiming to solve the cross-device issue
CEO: Mike Baker
Employees: 300
Estimated revenues: $118.4 million in 2013
Total venture funding: $55.8 million
Comment: In March DataXu launched a new platform called OneView that aims to solve one of marketers' biggest mobile headaches: targeting and measuring consumers as they switch from device to device. The company, which was founded by MIT astronautics and aeronautics scientists, who wrote the programs that guided NASA's Mars mission plans, now has over 400 customers including Vodafone, Ford, and General Mills. Baker claims the company grew revenue by 50% year over year in 2014.
15. xAd: Location-focused and making key hires
14. PubMatic: All signs point towards solid growth
CEO: Rajeev Goel
Employees: ~600
Revenues: ~$130 million revenue run rate in 2014
Total venture funding: $63 million
Comments: PubMatic said its revenue increased 90% year on year in 2014, while "doubling its rate of profitability." Last year the company expanded into new markets including Japan, Singapore, Italy, Brazil, the Middle East, and North Africa.
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip Ad13. AdRoll: Lots of ex-Googlers, and working with Apple
12. Collective: Its sell is transparency, one of the biggest issues in ad tech right now.
11. Quantcast: High-profile recent hires and a clear focus
CEO: Konrad Feldman
Employees: 650
Estimated revenues: We estimate a ~$200 million net revenue annual run rate
Total venture funding: $61.2 million
Comment: Quantcast hired a new CFO, and its first SVP of engineering in December — big hires from The Weather Company and Amazon, respectively. Back in October it made a big acquisition: Struq, a London-based cross-device retargeting company. Quantcast is focusing its efforts on programmatic ads, and it keeps on growing, all while staying EBITDA positive, we are told.
10. Undertone: Has taken the leap into programmatic and has a differentiated offer by focusing on creative
9. Mediaocean: Expanding into programmatic TV
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip Ad8. Outbrain: An IPO is imminent
CEO: Yaron Galai
Employees: 400
Estimated revenues: $260 million in 2014, according to AmigoBulls
Total venture funding: $99 million
Comment: The content recommendation company has been expected to file an IPO "imminently" since last year. But in November the company filed confidentially with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking preliminary approval to list on the Nasdaq, according to the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ's sources say Outbrain is expected to seek a valuation of around $1 billion. But nothing else related to the IPO has surfaced publicly since.
7. InMobi: Rumored to have been subject of an acquisition bid by Google
6. Videology: A specialist in the fastest-growing area of online advertising
CEO: Scott Ferber
Employees: 350
Estimated revenues: ~$300 million in 2014
Total venture funding: $134.2 million
Comment: Ferber has previously told Business Insider the company was "preparing" for an IPO in 2015, but the market has changed a lot since March 2014, so it may not happen. The video ad tech company said earlier this month it had seen programmatic mobile video campaigns jump 81% in Q1 — one of the rising trends in advertising.
5. MediaMath: The industry's favorite
CEO: Joe Zawadzki
Employees: 600+
Estimated revenues: $300 million to $400 million (according to our estimates.)
Total venture funding: $207.5 million
Comment: Last year we asked a bunch of executives which company they thought was the hottest ad tech startup, and MediaMath's name kept coming up. The company claims to be profitable and said sales last year reached $311 million. In October it acquired social advertising firm Upcast, building out its ad tech stack to social channels like Facebook.
4. Taboola: Expanding internationally at a great clip
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip Ad3. IronSource: An Israeli unicorn
2. AppNexus: Struck a mega partnership with WPP that will secure long-term ad revenue
1. Pinterest: Valued at $11 billion and making strides on mobile
CEO: Ben Silbermann
Estimated revenues: We don't know, but analysts predict the company will generate $500 million in revenues by 2016.
Employees: 500+
Total funding: $1.3 billion
Comment: Pinterest has been fundraising at a remarkable clip. The company's co-founder Evan Sharp told Business Insider it plans to spend the coming year focusing on international growth and making its Pins more "actionable." About 80% of its traffic comes from mobile, and last year it launched a "guided search" function to help people narrow down their results. Many people may think of Pinterest as a social network, but it's valuable war chest of intent data — products users are thinking about or aspire to buying — make it an extremely useful advertising tool.
Methodology: How this list is ranked
We looked at the following factors when we adjust our rankings and publish a new version of the list:
Revenues: This is the single most important factor in our ranking. Companies with robust businesses have revenues they can talk about in dollars (not blind percentage "growth" claims.) Companies that are modest about their revenues are usually modest for good reason.
Total employees: Companies tend to hire more people because they're handling more business. Headcount is a good proxy for growth — although having too many employees can drive down margins.
Funding: Investors tend to want their money back. So companies that have taken a lot of investment funding are under greater pressure to IPO than those that have not.
Reputation: It's great that some companies like to grow quietly without the distraction of the media spotlight — we're happy to ignore them.