Company description
Smaato provides Ads for Apps – operating the leading mobile advertising optimization platform called SOMA. More than 40,000 app developers and premium publishers have signed up with Smaato to monetize their content in 230+ countries.
SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of 70+ leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising revenues. Through an open API and the widest range of SDKs, SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.
Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association, Singapore Infocomm Industry (SITF), Singapore IT Federation and the German Digital Media Association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company Award by AlwaysOn Media (2011, 2009 & 2007), is one of the AlwaysOn Global 250 winners in the Mobile category (2011), was named a “company to watch in 2010” by Financial Analyst company GP Bullhound and recently was nominated finalist at the EMMA (Effective Mobile Marketing Awards), among other awards.
Smaato Inc. is based in San Francisco, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced International management team. The European headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany and the Asia-Pacific presence of Smaato has been established in Singapore.
Team
Ragnar Kruse
CEO & Founder
As CEO of Smaato, Ragnarleads the strategic vision of the leading mobile ad optimizer. As a serialentrepreneur with 30+ years experience in IT, Ragnar Kruse understands theunique challenges in bringing new technologies to market. He has built upseveral companies from inception to market launch in both the US and Europe.
At Intershop Communications, a leader inE-Commerce software solutions, Ragnar was VP of Sales and Marketing in SanFrancisco. During his tenure, Ragnar was instrumental in the company’s growthand ushering it through a successful IPO on NASDAQ and the “Neuer Markt” in1998. More recently, Ragnar held key management positions at high-techcompanies in the U.S. and Europe including eCharge and Xtramind. Through hismany years in IT, Ragnar maintains strong relationships with companies in thetelecommunications and mobile sectors, including Deutsche Telekom, Telekom NewZealand, Telstra, Telia, Cable & Wireless, Siemens, T-Online, T-Mobile,France Telecom, HP and SUN.
Harald Neidhardt
CMO & Co-Founder
Harald is CMO and Co-Founder at SmaatoInc. where he leads all marketing, PR and corporate development efforts. He has over 20 years of experience in marketing and businessdevelopment, having led interactive agencies and marketing consulting firms inboth the US and Europe. He was the CEO of Pixelpark (US), a former Bertelsmanncompany based in New York and headquartered in Berlin. As VP International heset up offices and new business initiatives in New York, Paris and London inpreparation for Pixelpark's IPO in 1999.
More recently, Harald managed a successfulviral marketing company, Cardmine in New York. Cardmine serves clients in theluxury beauty market including Estee Lauder and Procter & Gamble. In hiscareer, Harald has served clients such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom,Siemens, EMI, Lufthansa, Bertelsmann, BMG, Unilever and MoMA, the Museum ofModern Art in New York. Harald has a BA in Marketing Communications from CommunicationsAcademy, Hamburg.
Marc Junker
CIO & CTO
Marc Junker has over 10years experience in IT and mobile business. Before joining Smaato, he wasCo-Founder and CTO of mobileview, one of Europe’s leading Wireless ApplicationService Providers (WASP) for mobile entertainment, infotainment and dataservices. For seven years, Marc has successfully led the company with 35employees to being profitable after only three years and having a turnover of27 million Euros. In this position, Marc also established client relationshipsto leading international carriers and companies like Lufthansa, Talkline andT-Mobile in 17 countries. Mobileview has worked with over 50 MVNOs globally.
Before Marc co-founded mobileview, he was Vice President Development for OBS-AGand worked as an IT consultant for Geo++, Germany. Marc Junker has studiedMathematics, IT, and Business Studies and graduated from the University ofHanover, Germany.
Joerg Anhalt
SVP Mobile Publisher Development & Monetization
Joerg brings over 20 yearsof IT sales experience to Smaato's executive team. In his role as VP Sales heis responsible to grow worldwide sales efforts with carriers, mobile developersand ad sales networks. At Intershop Communications, he was VP BusinessDevelopment being responsible for growing the European and Asian markets.
Joerg's list of client relationships include the who's who of:telecommunications (T-COM, T-Systems, T-Online, KPN, Telecom Italia, Swisscom,Easynet, Freenet and Strato), mail order houses (otto group, Karstadt Quelle,Tchibo), media companies (Bertelsmann, Axel Springer Verlag, Gruner+Jahr) andconsumer brands (Hewlett Packard, Sony). Joerg's broad professional experiencecovers the fields of electronic commerce, electronic communication, 1 to 1marketing, database publishing combined with a strong high level salesbackground.
Petra Vorsteher
EVP, Strategic Alliances & Co-Founder
Petra has over 18 years ofbusiness development experience in the US and Europe. She was VP of BusinessDevelopment and Strategic Alliances at Intershop Communications, Inc. withresponsibility for all strategic, business and technical partnerships globally.
As founding member of Intershop, Petra was instrumental in growing the companyfrom a start-up to a publicly listed company with a market cap of $12B andworldwide offices in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. She was largelyresponsible for Intershop's $25M licensing deal with Deutsche Telekom and theirsubsequent investment in the company. Petra has formed partnerships with IBM,HP, Apple, Intel, SAP, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, eBay, Visa, FedEx, UPS andmajor telecommunication companies including AT & T, Sprint, Telstra, HongKong Telecom, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom.
Oliver Reiss
CFO
Oliver has over fifteenyears of experience in building internet and telecommunications businesses.Most recently, he was co-founder and CFO of the mobile platform serviceprovider Exit Games based in Germany and the USA. Oliver was instrumental insecuring funding from some high profile venture capital firms over the courseof several years.
His background involves senior positions with a leading European online agencyand a renowned management consulting firm, where he was involved in a largenumber of client projects for European telecommunications and media clients,focussing on corporate development and finance projects. More recently, hefounded and headed a consulting venture in the software business. Oliverreceived a MBA degree and Ph.D. from the Philipps-University in Marburg.
http://www.smaato.com/management
Business model
Three things Smaato does for mobile publishers:
- Aggregation of 70+ leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising revenues
- Reach people worldwide (230+ countries)
- Highest eCPM and Fill Rate
- One API, free sign up
- Widest range of SDKs (iPhone, iPad, Android, S60, Qt, WRT, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry & Bada)
Competitive advantage
SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of 70+ leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising revenue. SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.
Investors