Public markets have rarely been kind to advertising technology, or adtech, companies. Millennial Media—once the poster child for hot tech companies going public—found this out the hard way. When it went public in 2012, the US-based adtech firm’s share price doubled doubled Biz Journals How Millennial Media went from a hot IPO to an AOL acquisition Read more on the first day of trading to almost $28. Three years later, with its share price languishing at $1.34, it was acquired by Verizon-owned AOL at $1.75 a share.
ad-verse
Affle rides on conversions to beat the adtech IPO curse
Since it debuted on India's bourses in August 2019, adtech firm Affle has seen its stock appreciate almost 240%. With a host of acquisitions and a shift from a sales-driven model, it's fighting to buck the trend of adtech IPOs that have flamed out
The digital advertising market in India was around $1.86 billion in 2019, but the industry is not an easy one to tread
Affle navigates this by getting 90% of its revenue from conversions; it gets paid only if there’s an outcome
Despite being in the adtech businesses, debt-free Affle is not a tech company like Google and Facebook
But it doesn’t need to be. It built its tech chops with a slew of acquisitions and now it wants to grow in both clientele and geographies
