Indonesia's ADSKOM Raises Series A Investment from Geniee, Convergence Ventures, and East Ventures to Dominate Digital Ad Market in Southeast Asia

JAKARTA, Indonesia, July 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- ADSKOM, Southeast Asia's premier, data-driven, programmatic advertising platform announced today that it raised a round of series A funding of an undisclosed amount led by Japan's Geniee. The two other firms participating in the round were Convergence Ventures in Indonesia, and existing investor East Ventures.

With the newly acquired capital, ADSKOM is looking to aggressively grow its revenue by 300 to 500 percent, while also expanding to Malaysia and Thailand. It is also looking to expand its programmatic ad services to mobile and video platforms.

"This is our first ever investment in Southeast Asia," says Akifusa Kanda, Executive Director at Japan's leading Supply Side Platform and ad network Geniee. "With this investment, we will continue to work together with ADSKOM through knowledge sharing and an increase of direct business transactions."

Italo Gani, Co-founder and CEO of ADSKOM, reveals that his firm had already been working closely with Geniee prior to the investment. "There's been a lot of cooperation between the two companies and we share a common goal of using the most cutting-edge ad technologies to help maximize revenue of our customers," says Gani.

The regional digital ad market is huge, growing by double digits every year. Analysts say the estimated total digital ad spend in Southeast Asia is a whopping US$915 million in 2014, excluding the Philippines.

In Indonesia alone, companies are expected to spend more than US$800 million on digital ads in 2015, up 80 percent from last year's US$460 million, according to a recent study by eMarketer. Of that amount, US$130 million will go toward ads for mobile devices, a staggering increase of more than 200 percent from US$40 million last year.

Growth will continue steadily through 2019, when the total ad market in Indonesia (including ads appearing on traditional media) is predicted to jump to US$19.58 billion. Spending on digital and mobile ads will likely contribute around US$7.6 billion by then.

With this in mind, ADSKOM's data-driven advertising and marketing platform is well-positioned to capture the market as a strong regional player.

Willson Cuaca, Managing Partner of East Ventures says, "We were very excited to participate again in funding ADSKOM." He continues, "the company is moving incredibly fast and we have very high confidence in the team. ADSKOM is one of those rare companies that thinks and positions itself globally, while building a team and executing locally." Cuaca says advertising technology is a complex space, one which not every startup team can tackle. 

In the adtech business, Data Management Platform (DMP), Supply Side Platform (SSP), and Agency Trading Desk are important terms. DMP refers to a software system that aggregates, sorts, and saves information. From there, the software then displays it in a meaningful way for publishers and businesses to make decisions about where to put ads. An SSP is a tech solution for easily automating the ad sales process.

An Agency Trading Desk is a real-time bidding and ad exchange. It's a service dedicated to helping companies actually purchase online ads and it helps digital advertisers make the most of their budgets.

Solid data management and deep technology platforms are keys to the success of online advertising. Understanding this, ADSKOM has become the first company in Indonesia to build its own DMP product called VASA. With it, marketers, publishers, and businesses in general are now able to optimize their spending by targeting specific users with the right ads, at the right time, and in the right places.

Additionally, ADSKOM provides a complete solution for digital ad campaigns in Southeast Asia via its SSP product called AXON, as well as its Agency Trading Desk product called ACTIO.

"We strive to strengthening our lead in Southeast Asia's programmatic advertising space by managing audience data with multiple data partners," says Daniel Armanto, Co-founder and CTO of ADSKOM. "ADSKOM is a data-driven advertising platform that leverages the data collected from our local partners, and that's our unique selling proposition. We are capable of collecting and processing local consumer behavior data - which creates a regionally competitive advantage. We are also the only local player who has the tech and the team to support a Big Data operation."

ADSKOM currently manages 150 million pieces of unique audience data for the Indonesian market. As Indonesia's market leader in premium publisher inventory, the team is integrated with more than 200 supply, data, and demand partners. Currently, ADSKOM operates in three countries - Indonesia, Singapore, and the US.

"We believe that ADSKOM is the leader in the adtech space in Indonesia, and it is the only company we see that has superior technology in terms of integrating Data Management Platform and Supply Side Platform products," says Adrian Li, Managing Partner of Convergence Ventures.

Prior to this funding round, ADSKOM raised multiple seed-stage investments from Japan's Rebright Partners, Digital Garage, Beenos Plaza, and Skystar Capital in Indonesia.

For more information, please contact:

Italo Gani
Co-founder and CEO
Italo@adskom.com
+62812.1248.256
www.adskom.com