Smaato is a global real-time advertising platform for mobile publishers and app developers, with more than one billion monthly mobile users. Smaato focuses on the monetization of mobile apps and connecting advertisers to in-app ad inventory. This technology enables app publishers to keep their apps free for users. The company was founded in 2005 by Ragnar Kruse and Petra Vorsteher. The name Smaato comes from the Japanese word for "smart." Smaato is headquartered in San Francisco, California. There are additional offices in New York, Hamburg, Berlin, Singapore, and Shanghai.
History
Founded in 2005, Smaato launched its mobile supply-side platform a year after the company was formed. In 2012, Smaato launched its real-time biddingad exchange. After, the company focused on mobile acquisition and building out the self-service side of its automation platform. In 2015, the company released a full-featured publisher ad server, the Smaato Publisher Platform. The platform enables app developers and digital publishers to immediately monetize their properties by delivering target consumers to advertisers, based on real-time data. The following year, Smaato was selected by Google and integrated into the AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers platforms via SDK-less mediation. Later in 2016, Smaato further developed its solutions for the demand side of mobile advertising. The Smaato Demand Platform offered demand partners greater flexibility and control over their mobile ad traffic. Smaato was sold to Beijing-based Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communication Group for $148 Million in 2016. In 2018, the company integrated with Amazon Publisher Services to provide in-app demand partners access to Amazon's Transparent Ad Marketplace inventory. Smaato presently focuses on deploying artificial intelligence and machine learning. In May 2018, their Automated Traffic Curation product was reported to significantly reduce costs of programmatic bidding for demand-side platforms. The machine learning technologyfilters out less relevant inventory before sending a bid request to a demand partner's platform — providing better opportunities for advertisers by saving time and expenses related to data processing. The majority of Smaato's revenues currently come from the US, but the company expects a significant increase in the Chinese market in the coming years.
Company Culture
Smaato has over 190 employees from more than 40 different countries. The company is based on three core values: people, commitment, and leadership. Smaato also aims to provide a clean, protected mobile advertising marketplace to the industry.
