Photo: Taboola
Last year, Ad Age proclaimed New York City the "predominant force in ad tech." That's not surprising when considering the Big Apple's long and rich history in the space.
Many of the new media companies that formed the original "Silicon Alley" were working in digital advertising, including Razorfish and DoubleClick (acquired by Google in 2007), and ad tech has been at the core of New York's tech innovations since the 1990s.
Following in the footsteps of other ad tech pioneers, the modern New York tech scene currently hosts some of the world’s top ad tech companies. We've rounded up 10 of the biggest.
Zeta Interactive is a big data ad tech platform that specializes in customer lifecycle marketing. The technology helps brands acquire and retain customers.
The company scored a $125M funding round in July 2015, and joined the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs earlier this year.
Founded in 2007, Zeta is expected to reach $300 million in revenues this year and has more than 500 employees with offices around the U.S. and globe.
Valued at more than $1.2 billion, AppNexus is one of the biggest tech companies in NYC.
Founded in 2007, the company's cloud-based software helps the world’s top publishers monetize their content through integrated ad serving and programmatic selling solutions. The AppNexus exchange platform allows publishers to find the highest bidders in the market for their ad impressions.
When a visitor opens a webpage, the content loads a fraction of a second before the ads. In that split second, AppNexus holds an automated auction to find the highest bidder for the advertising space. The ad tech giant runs this auction more than 13 billion times a day.
Headquartered in New York, AppNexus now employs more than 900 people in 23 global offices.
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Undertone is more of a traditional advertising company operating in a digital environment.
The firm, founded in 2002, is focused on creating responsive video ads that adapt across all screen sizes, and sells space on sites owned by Gannett, American Media, USA Today Sports, Accuweather, Bonnier Corp. and more.
Undertone began selling its Impact Video full-screen ads in April 2014 and some of its notable clients include BMW and L’Oreal.
Headquartered on Madison Avenue, Undertone employs more than 300 people in 10 cities across the world, including three international offices in London, Hamburg and Tel Aviv.
Taboola calls itself a content discovery platform rather than an advertising play. Those ‘content you may like’ ads that appear at the bottom of web articles are likely powered by Taboola, or its biggest competitor, Outbrain.
Customers have links to their content at the bottom of articles across a wide range of client sites like TMZ, the BBC, The Weather Channel and Time.
Taboola shares the revenues from these ads with publishers and has reported earnings of more than $250 million. The company has recently expanded to directly advertise products and services.
Founded in 2007, Taboola also has offices in Pasadena, Calif., Tel Aviv, London and Bangkok.
Mediaocean, which partners with both Facebook's Atlas and Google's DoubleClick, develops and designs advertising software and services for marketers.
In a deal that valued Mediaocean at $720 million, Vista Equity Partners acquired a controlling share in the company in June 2015.
Mediaocean was created in 2011 when Mediabank, a media buying tech company, merged with Donovan Data Systems.
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MediaMath's TerminalOne platform allows marketers to handle all their digital needs with one tool. The tool uses in-house data to identify target audiences and automate one-to-one advertising messages.
MediaMath had one of the first demand-side platforms (DSP) for automated purchasing of online ads when it began in 2007. In 2014, it acquired social advertising startup Upcast, which helped expand its ad reach to social channels like Facebook.
MediaMath now has 16 offices and data centers around the world, employing more than 750 people.
Outbrain is a content recommendation platform that uses engagement and popularity to serve links that are most likely to spark a reader's interest.
Like Taboola, the company recommends content on some of the web's largest publishers, such as CNN, Time, Mashable, ESPN and VentureBeat. Advertisers share their revenue with the publishers.
Outbrain has more than 500 employees and is poised to file an IPO sometime this year. It has offices around the world and reaches an audience of 557 million with 200 billion recommendations a month.
Specializing in location-based ad targeting, xAd helps marketers deliver personalized messages to customers while they are physically on site at a business location or within its proximity.
In a bid to compete for brands' search budgets, earlier this year xAd unveiled "MarketPlace," which tags locations with keywords and lets marketers purchase those keywords to target specific groups of consumers with mobile ads.
Founded in 2009, xAd has more than 200 employees and approximately $74M in funding. With locations around the globe, its partners include Nielsen, Forbes, ESPN and IMDb.
Collective is a programmatic advertising technology platform that works across multiple devices and media formats.
In a move to make the media buying process more transparent, last year Collective released VISTO, a tool that gives clients side-by-side comparisons of performance, pricing and data at a granular level.
Founded in 2005, Collective has more than 200 employees and offices in New York, London, UK and Bangalore, India.
Integral Ad Science is an advertising technology firm that provides data and tools designed to help marketers assess the quality of digital media and maximize their ROI.
Formerly known as AdSafe, the company rebranded itself as a "media valuation platform" in 2012. In Feb. 2015, Integral Ad Science announced the opening of its Anti-Fraud Lab to conduct research and advance anti-fraud solutions in the ad tech space.
Founded in 2009, Integral Ad Solutions has more than 200 employees with offices across the U.S. and around the globe.
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