Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Execs from Roku, Amobee, Factual, and Xandr are shaking up digital
After a few quiet years, 2018 was a big one for advertising and marketing tech.
Before May, investors and observers worried whether the increasing regulatory scrutiny from Europe's General Data Protection Regulation would shut down companies or dry up venture-capital funding even more than it has in recent years. And while there were a fewinitial casualties of GDPR, VC money continued to flow to a variety of companies, from established programmatic players to data-minded startups trying to shake up TV and digital measurement.
Seemingly everyone from private-equity firms, agency holding companies, telecoms, and marketing clouds went on acquisition tears, snatching up "mad-tech," a blend of advertising- and marketing-tech companies. A handful of ad-tech companies either quietly faded or went up for sale.
"You could certainly say that 2018 was a year of consolidation," Mark Wagman, managing director of MediaLink, told Business Insider. "In the view of the marketers and brands we work with, it's still not yet enough consolidation. They hope that more will happen that will simplify their media-value chain."
In the past our list has often highlighted the hottest pre-IPO companies, but given all the activity this year - and a dwindling number of private companies - we've now opened it to public and private firms. So on this list, major companies that generate billions of dollars in revenue join startups expecting to make a few million dollars this year.
"Both advertising and marketing professionals should be following a wider swatch of companies who are innovating and executing in this space," said Ana Milicevic, principal and cofounder of Sparrow Advisers, a boutique consultancy that advises advertising and
Since we're focusing on upstarts and companies born out of media companies, Facebook, Google and Amazon are intentionally not on the list. That said, the big three are circling practically every one of these companies in some way, whether it's with its data, power, or potential to disrupt an industry.
Methodology
There was no one criterion used to decide which companies made our list.
The lines between ad-tech companies and mar-tech companies continue to blur. So, similar to last year, this list reflects the growing number of mar-tech players we're watching, including some that don't touch paid media at all but instead specialize in data or analytics.
We looked at a number of factors in evaluating companies, such as headcount, revenue, and recent funding. We also considered what issues the companies are trying to solve, whether it's powering millions of programmatic spend or experimenting with blockchain technology.
We talked to a lot of execs, analysts, and investors to figure out which companies should, and shouldn't, be included, based on their reputation and with whom they work.
We tried our best to follow where money and marketers' interest are going. That means a handful of firms valued at billions and have raised millions aren't included. Most notably, you'll notice two categories that are less represented this year than in previous years: social-media management and native advertising.
Here are the 19 most intriguing ad-tech and mar-tech firms of 2018, listed alphabetically.