MadTechMoney: Three takeaways from the ad tech investment event
Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of partnering with FirstPartyCapital on this year’s edition of MadTechMoney. The industry-leading ad tech investment event brought together all sides of the investment community – including private equity, venture capital, corporate development, and strategic investors – to explore the latest trends, pinch points, and successes of the ad tech investment space.
Taking place on 24 October 2024 at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms, this year’s event built upon the reputation and success of its previous iterations, creating a truly unique afternoon filled with insights on the current investment landscape from some of the leading figures in the field. With over 200 attendees, the conference floor was buzzing and the agenda featured talks from speakers from a range of different backgrounds.
Here is what we learnt from the 2024 edition of MadTechMoney:
Don’t be afraid to scale fast
In a panel discussion moderated by Tal Hewitt from EY Parthenon, Rémi Lemonnier from Scibids Technology, Ionut Ciobotaru from PubNative, and Daniel Pirchio from Onetag discussed groundbreaking strategies for scaling and selling ad tech businesses in today’s economic climate.
All members of the panel agreed that being bold and expanding fast was key for start-ups looking to rapidly fuel growth. Ciobotaru recommended that innovators look to “Scale faster – we took too long and didn’t succeed. It’s better to fail faster to get to market faster.” Lemonnier stated that one of the keys to Scibids growth was to hire directors in a number of key markets, helping them to gain a vital foothold and valuable market knowledge. Similarly, Pirchio told start-ups to “feel bold enough to go straight to the US.”
However, it was clear how important strategy is to rapid growth. “Align with your strategy from the start with your co-founders,” stated Pirchio. “This is the definition of the leadership and growth that your company needs to succeed.” Having a good team and strong culture also helps build a solid foundation, while Lemonnier concluded with some great advice for any entrepreneur: “Keep your head down and focus on the business. If you get distracted, then maybe the deal is done.”
Europe’s ad tech investment networks are growing
Lara O’Reilly, Senior Correspondent at Business Insider, sat down with the founders of FirstPartyCapital – Rich Ashton, Managing Partner; Kevin Flood, General Partner; and Ciarán O’Kane, General Partner – to uncover what the European ad tech investment landscape looks like currently.
O’Kane said that, after witnessing the thriving VC network in New York and Silicon Valley in the US, FirstPartyCapital was born to create an ad tech financing solution within Europe. Flood agreed: “The idea is to build a community VC with anyone that’s looking to pay it forward and invest in the industry, with the scale of collective intelligence”.
However, the panel confirmed, the European market is currently tougher than its US equivalent. Flood told the audience, “It’s harder to scale in Europe, but if you’re able to do it, you become very valuable for acquirers in the US.” O’Kane expanded upon this explaining that, currently within the European market, there is no unified view on ad tech but that events such as MadTechMoney are helping to build that.
A trend that Ashton pointed to within the European market is the growth of non-traditional media companies bringing in-house ad tech assets. Flood elaborated, explaining that with companies like Uber looking to build out their ad business, the opportunities for investors are enormous. The future is clearly looking bright for European ad tech.
Retail Media Networks are the next frontier
Paul Wright from Uber Advertising, Martin Jensen from Nexta, and James Avery from Kevel, alongside moderator Rachel Smith from ExchangeWire, discussed one of ad tech’s most rapidly growing sectors – retail media networks.
With more and more publishers looking to enter the retail media space, the panel outlined the need to approach this new channel in a considered way. Wright pointed out that advertising has to be complementary to the user experience to make a retail network a success. Avery added that: “More money comes into the ecosystem as retail media networks improve. And increasingly, it’s an existential threat to retailers if they don’t invest in retail media networks.” Jensen also pointed out that the infrastructure for these networks has been around for a decade, if not more – it’s now time that brands utilised it.
If you would like to find out more about MadTechMoney or any of our takeaways, get in touch with our team.