In 2014, when XAnge invested in Dynadmic, the ad tech ecosystem was booming. Globally, and especially in France. The previous year, Criteo had brilliantly succeeded in its IPO on the Nasdaq, stirring up a wave of optimism (and pride) for French entrepreneurs.
Since then, adtech market has had ups and downs, caused by regulations such as GDPR in Europe, the growing hegemony of the triopoly (Google, Facebook, Amazon) on the digital ad market, the high level of fraud in the programmatic buying process or the increased rejection of (bad) online advertising by consumers…
Furthermore, the industry is now bracing itself for the end of cookies, which are still an essential tracking tool for many adtech players. Though, as early as 2014, some visionary entrepreneurs understood these emerging trends and were already looking for solutions to fight the flaws of the adtech market. Stéphane, Bruno and Céline were among them.
With their vision of a contextual targeting technology (hence cookieless and privacy proof by design), focused on a video advertising (a media that kept growing since 2014), they convinced us to invest in their startup. Today, as they join Smart, we are glad to have helped them achieve their vision, in a wonderful way. With 120 employees, Dynadmic achieved 30%+ growth in 2020 and is now accelerating even faster in Q1 2021, thanks to its proprietary audio and video content recognition technology, which offers advertisers a unique cookie-free contextual targeting solution.
At the time, the founders also impressed us with their strong ambition: they wanted to establish Dynadmic on the US market as quickly as possible. The move came very early in the development of the company, after their Series A financing round and that paid off. Seven years later, the US represents more than half of their revenues. Even better, New York was just a first step: Dynadmic now has offices in 4 continents and 7 countries (US, France, Germany, Mexico, Brasil, Colombia, Dubai). What a journey!
As you may know, at XAnge we like entrepreneurs who think “global” from day 1. Stéphane, Bruno and Celine as well as their team have mastered their international expansion. We bet they will be more than happy to share their tips and best practices to fellow Xange entrepreneurs. One of them is being “smart”, by listening carefully to the needs of each local market. By joining Smart (the company), Dynadmic will be able to pursue the vision of its founders, at an even larger scale.
