Drives Double-Digit Revenue Growth and Increased Impressions by 725%, Recognized as Colorado Company to Watch and Denver Post’s Top Places to Work
DENVER – SpotXchange, Inc., the largest global marketplace of digital video ad inventory, announced an exceptional 2012 for the company as it delivered record-breaking revenue and ad impression growth. SpotXchange’s success and revenue growth of 69 percent in 2012 was due in part to the company’s leadership in programmatic selling of online video advertising, expanded strategic partnerships and international growth. As the advertising marketplace evolves and advances due to greater innovation like programmatic buying and selling of digital video, SpotXchange is primed for continued rapid growth on the heels of a very successful 2012. In fact, already in 2013, SpotXchange has been recognized as a Colorado Company to Watch, and was listed by the Denver Post as one of the top places to work for the second year in a row.
“Programmatic video advertising was a huge growth area for us in 2012, and we’ve set the bar even higher for 2013 with the launch of our industry-first programmatic selling tools, which provide tremendous new capabilities for our publishers and push the boundaries of innovative ad buying.”
The success of SpotXchange’s digital video advertising marketplace comes at a time when the online video market is undergoing tremendous growth, as advertisers and brands increasingly supplement their TV ad campaigns. According to a new study*, as online video has grown, real-time bidding (RTB) inventory and revenue have grown faster than the overall video market as a buying mechanism for acquiring inventory. RTB will account for 24.7 percent of all U.S. online video spending, eclipsing the $1 billion threshold by 2014.
“Our strong growth is partially due to the fact that our partners report that SpotXchange is consistently one of the top inventory sources for programmatically-enabled, brand-safe in-stream video,” said Mike Shehan, CEO of SpotXchange. “Programmatic video advertising was a huge growth area for us in 2012, and we’ve set the bar even higher for 2013 with the launch of our industry-first programmatic selling tools, which provide tremendous new capabilities for our publishers and push the boundaries of innovative ad buying.”
Expanded Ecosystem of Partners Fuel Record Growth
SpotXchange expanded strategic partnerships with partners including AdoTube, DataXu, MaxPoint, SundaySky, TubeMogul, Turn and Videology during 2012, and struck a record number of new partnerships, including AcuityAds, Brand.net, Brandscreen, Digilant, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager and Struq. In addition to SpotXchange’s record-breaking overall revenue growth, the company’s RTB platform saw 10 times the revenue over the past year. Also, the company doubled the number of auctions in its exchange since 2012, with over 400 million auctions per day. Furthermore, comparing year over year growth, the company generated 4 times the number of bid requests to its RTB demand partners (more than 50 billion per month).
“Brands are shifting their digital video budgets to programmatic platforms and we partner closely with SpotXchange to enable this revolution in media buying,” said Brett Wilson, CEO and Co-Founder of TubeMogul. “SpotXchange is a technology innovator and the capabilities they bring to market provide direct benefits to our brand clients.”
“Turn works with the best inventory partners: for the right audience, the right scale, in the right place, to deliver value for marketers,” said Maureen Little, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Turn. “SpotXchange is a valued partner providing our advertisers with real-time access to the programmatic online video marketplace.”
International Growth and Expansion
SpotXchange established its first overseas operations in mid-2011 opening subsidiaries in Australia and the UK. In December 2012, the company expanded its European expertise with the appointment of Sophie Davidas as Director, Business Development in France. SpotXchange believes overseas markets represent a significant growth opportunity as campaigns targeted outside of the US represented 19% of 2012 revenue.
Product and Industry Advancements
SpotXchange continued to deliver key innovation across its product portfolio while educating and expanding the industry around insights like RTB and programmatic buying and selling, including:
- Forrester RTB Research: Second annual Forrester study that found that RTB in online video advertising is growing at a 57% CAGR, and total RTB spend will reach $1.14 billion in 2014. To download the study, visit SpotXchange.
- Industry-First Programmatic Selling Tools: SpotXchange’s new suite of publisher tools provides more transparency than ever, and enables publishers to make real-time, automated pricing decisions on an impression-by-impression basis. For the first time in video, publishers have insight into who their buyers are, what segments of their inventory are most in demand, and the tools to make selling decisions based on those insights.
- First Call Service: Allows online publishers like IDG TechNetwork and Tetris Online to capitalize on demand for premium video advertising inventory by brand advertisers via an exchange in a safe and transparent environment. The number of “First Calls” from publishers to the SpotXchange marketplace has increased 131% over the past year.
- RTB Insights: First to provide auto- versus user-initiated video advertising information to real-time bidding buyers and better insights into bidding activity for RTB partners.
- Digital Video Survival Guide: Provides advertisers and publishers with best practices, insights and tips to navigate through the cluttered digital video landscape and maximize their investment in online video.
- Private Marketplace: In February, SpotXchange hired Dana Caputo of Conde Nast as Director of Private Marketplace Services, a role in which she will help build invite-only private marketplaces for video publishers to leverage programmatic selling and maintain 100% control over their inventory.
- SkipIt: New online video ad-skipping technology for consumers balances control/flexibility levers between publishers, advertisers and consumers, helping to reduce high-abandonment rates. Nearly 5 billion invites to skip video ads have been sent to tens of thousands of SkipIt members over the past year.
Corporate Social Responsibility Drives Top Places to Work in Denver for Two Consecutive Years, and Colorado Company to Watch in 2013
SpotXchange made advancements in corporate culture and responsibility and added new benefits for employees. The Denver Post, for two consecutive years, has identified the company as one of the metro area’s top workplaces in their annual survey of best places to work. The Denver Post’s second annual Top Workplaces section highlights the Denver area’s top companies as ranked by their employees.
SpotXchange was also awarded the Colorado Companies to Watch Award in Q2 of this year. The Colorado Companies to Watch award energizes the state of Colorado by recognizing second-stage companies that are developing valuable products and services, creating quality jobs, enriching communities, and creating new industries throughout the state.
Additionally, the company announced the availability of unlimited paid-time off (PTO) for employees, mandating a positive work-life balance for its team members. Along with Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, SpotXchange was selected as a Pacesetter organization for the National Center for Women & Information Technology, a fast-track program in which senior executives from startups, corporations, universities, and government commit to increasing their numbers of women in technology.
* Forrester Consulting, “RTB Powers the Rapid Growth of Online Video” (April 8, 2013)
For more information on SpotXchange please visit: http://www.spotxchange.com/.
About SpotXchange
With more than 400 million auctions per day, SpotXchange is the largest global marketplace of video ad inventory reaching 120 million unique visitors in more than 50 countries each month. The leading platform for programmatic buying and selling of digital video, SpotXchange connects thousands of publishers with advertisers, agencies, trading desks and ad networks, running top brand campaigns through its IAB-certified marketplace. SpotXchange shows premium publishers and more than 1,000 world class advertisers that there is a better way to buy and sell digital video — with solutions that guarantee total transparency, brand safety and real-time control in either a private or public marketplace.
