Adludio is an AI-driven technology company that delivers premium mobile advertising. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Adludio’s CEO Paul Coggins.
Paul Coggins’ Background
Paul Coggins started his career at the advent of digital advertising in the mid-1990s, selling some of the UK’s very first digital banners whilst working for John Brown Publishers.
“After this, I held a number of director roles at leading companies in the 2000s, including Carlton Online (later ITV.com), Greenlight Search, Zanox, and GETMEIN (later acquired by Ticketmaster). In 2010, I helped launch Ebuzzing, now Teads, one of the world’s largest video advertising marketplaces, to the UK market,” said Coggins. “In 2014, drawing upon almost two decades of expertise across search, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, video, and display advertising, I launched Adludio.”
Formation Of Adludio
How did the idea for Adludio come together? “With a passion for all things creative, in the early 2010s, I saw that mobile advertising was noticeably falling behind in this regard. Thanks to fierce competition in the sector, many brands were taking a ‘spray and pray’ approach, whereby they focused on sending out an advertising campaign to as wide an audience as possible in the hope it will reach the right prospect. With no real thought, creativity, or analysis behind it,” Coggins recalled. “Other brands went for a more sophisticated method, that honed in on data to ensure that they were reaching the right consumers, but with no proper consideration for the creative and what ad iteration would be best received by an individual. The result was campaigns that were boring, static, and uninspiring.”
“As the industry enters this next phase – with deprecated identifiers and constricted ad spending – the brands that truly understand the relationship between their mobile creative and the levels of consumer attention that this can sustain will be the ones that prosper. At the same time, standard metrics simply no longer cut it. Instead, brands now need to understand in detail exactly how, where, and when their ads are engaging users, so they can make more informed decisions to increase engagement. This is where the idea for Adludio came from; AI technology, informed by data supporting beautiful, highly engaging, and interactive ads on mobile,” Coggins added.
Challenges Faced Building The Company
What are some of the challenges Coggins faced in building the company and has the current macroeconomic climate had any effect on the company?
“There are many challenges to building a business, but the number one is getting the right people in at the right time. Businesses evolve and so new skill sets are required. Making sure that you have the correct expertise, motivation, and passion in your team is paramount,” Coggins pointed out. “At Adludio, the current economic downturn has made us focus on how we will maximize the opportunity of the recovery, including preparing for what we expect to be a strong bounce back in the US market especially. Innovation flourishes during adversity. So, Adludio’s focus on delivering exceptional value, brilliant creative, and AI-driven solutions positions us perfectly for the rebound.”
Core Products
What are Adludio’s core products and features?
Adludio delivers premium mobile advertising, utilizing the most advanced Deep Learning technologies to optimize client campaigns across all aspects of the advertising process. And the company algorithmically ranks inventory, ensuring that campaigns appear in the right place to achieve specific KPIs while also increasing media buying efficiency through budget pacing to maximize revenue.
“The platform is powered by AI-based techniques including Computer Vision (CV), Neural Networks and Natural Language Processing (NLP), which are leveraged to get a complete and accurate understanding of the way an individual consumer responds to all aspects of an ad. Ranging from the position of objects and text to background and foreground colors,” Coggins noted. “This allows our platform to continuously optimize campaigns and ensure that consumers are presented with the perfect combination of design variables. The creative is ultimately what is going to captivate consumers. With these unique AI-led capabilities, we are not only providing our clients with the best-performing ad creative but also the unique insight as to why this level of performance was possible.”
Evolution Of Adludio’s Technology
How has Adludio’s technology evolved since launching?
“In November 2022, we introduced major enhancements to our platform and its technological capabilities, which go far beyond what is standard in the industry. With an emphasis on Deep Learning, this has enabled our global clients a unique level of measurement and actionable insights, that is helping them to win the battle for brand attention,” Coggins revealed.
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Adludio’s most significant milestones?
In early April, Adludio received £2 million in funding from Mercia as a follow-on from the company’s Series A funding round in November 2021 of £4 million.
“In October 2022 we welcomed Dave Ramsay and Ian Liddicoat to the business, as Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer respectively. Since this time, the experience of Dave and Ian, in leading product strategy and data transformation programs to scale up businesses, has been invaluable to Adludio,” Coggins shared. “As we continue to align the business around the four pillars of creative, media, optimization, and insights, their expertise will build our product and operational functions considerably. This in turn will help further cement Adludio as a leader in this new era of attention-driven mobile advertising.”
Customer Success Stories
What have been some of Adludio’s success stories?
“Our global clients, representing a range of sectors including automotive, luxury, FMCG and retail, have had their mobile marketing strategies transformed by Adludio’s solutions,” Coggins told me. “For example, Microsoft partnered with Adludio to promote its Xbox One X games console. Wanting to drive awareness via an interactive brand experience on mobile, the result was a recreation of the Xbox’s controller on mobile, which invited the user to turn it on. The outcome of this campaign was an engagement rate of 20%, including a purchase intent increase of 5.4 points. Likewise, Nike sought to build awareness of its Joyride running shoe by delivering an interactive mobile experience for its consumers. Allowing Nike’s customers to investigate the shoe on their phones, the campaign had an engagement rate of 32% as well as a click-through rate of 11%. Through Adludio’s platform, and its sophisticated combination of creative, media and AI, we offer clients only the best-performing campaigns and crucially the associated insight that has made this result possible.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Adludio pursuing?
“Global mobile advertising is due to deliver $500 billion in 2024. This is the market in which we are competing, even if a large proportion of that is media money destined for the large social platforms,” analyzed Coggins.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Adludio from its competition?
“The breadth and depth of the techniques that Adludio uses, and the resulting insights of our platform unlocks, are unparalleled in the digital media space, guaranteeing clients the best-performing ad creative and the greatest return on investment,” Coggins replied.
Future Company Goals
What are some of Adludio’s future company goals?
“Looking ahead, with the opportunities afforded by the bounceback and growth of the US market, we will focus our attention here. Moreover, with this additional investment from Mercia, the new version of our platform due to be launched in 2024 will fully automate many of its processes and offer customers a one-stop shop for mobile advertising,” Coggins concluded. “Powered by AI and data science, and delivering everything from creative production to unique campaign insights, as well as media buying and targeting, our new platform will provide brands and agencies the unique chance to translate user attention into profit.”
