Advertising technology startup Adskom raises USD 850k funding to expand into Southeast Asia
Singapore based programmatic advertising startup ADSKOM has raised S$1.06 million (US$850K) in seed-round funding from high-profile investors Digital Garage, East Ventures, Beenos Plaza and Skystar Capital. Launched in April 2013, ADSKOM is the first company to develop and build a programmatic platform customised for the ASEAN market.
This recent investment will be used to fund the development of its new data management platform and also for expansion into Southeast Asia, with Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia as the priority markets.
Related read: 130,000 users across 146 countries and growing - Singapore startup Zopim story
According to a report by Magna Global, Asia will have the fastest programmatic growth in 2014 (73%) with a total spend of over US$500 million. Singapore and Malaysia will be the highest growth countries. eMarketer predicts advertisers in Asia-Pacific will spend US$152 billion on all paid media channels this year, with digital advertising seeing an increase of US$40 billion.
Italo Gani, CEO of Adskom shared,
Digital advertising in Asia today is at an inflection point, with marketers and advertisers turning to programmatic advertising to shape their strategies, as well as evaluate campaigns. With this new funding we will expand our programmatic advertising solutions in Indonesia and other markets in Southeast Asia and build our next-generation platforms focused on data management. With the biggest market share for programmatic advertising solutions in Indonesia, and working with top premium publishers in the region, we are positioned to take advantage of this market opportunity presented by the rapid expansion of programmatic advertising in Southeast Asia.
ADSKOM provides programmatic advertising platforms to help ad-buyers reach their audience more efficiently, and to help publishers increase revenues. With close to 40 people, Adskom is led by Daniel Armanto, a long time power-player in IT product development, and Italo Gani, a well-known digital business entrepreneur.
Southeast Asia’s smartphone penetration is on an upswing, making it a favourable region in which to invest. Partnering with Adskom serves to capture this growing momentum. We believe the team has the expertise, product set and traction to be the category leader for programmatic advertising in Southeast Asia” shared Mr. Fumihiko Ishimaru, COO of DG Incubation, the investment arm of Digital Garage.
In Q2 2013, Adskom received initial seed funding from Rebright Partners, a venture capital firm in Japan. The funding was key to the development of Adskom‘s Supply-Side Platform (SSP) that prioritised helping publishers. It currently manages approximately 500 million impressions per month and is projected to handle more than one billion impressions per month in Q1 2015.
Adskom works with Indonesia’s premium publishers including Kompas.com, Kapanlagi.com, Detik.com, Okezone.com and Liputan6.com. It also works with close to 70 demand side partners that are very active in the Southeast Asia market, including Tubemogul, Criteo, Vserv.mobi, DoubleClick Bid Managers and others.
The brands that run campaigns using Adskom’s platforms in Indonesia include P&G, Unilever, Bank Central Asia (BCA) Indonesia’s biggest bank, pharmaceutical group Combiphar and more. Well known global agencies like the WPP group, Aegis Dentsu Networks, Omnicom, Starcom, DM Pratama etc., also partner with ADSKOM to bring real-time bidding technology to Southeast Asia.
Related read: Singapore based Zimplistic to launch Rotimatic to help make ‘rotis’ with a click of a button