AllThingsD » Tim Cadogan

CEO Tim Cadogan Talks About OpenX's First Profitable Quarter and Where Ad Tech Is Going Next (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:00:03 +0000

OpenX, the online digital advertising upstart, announced this morning that it had reached profitability for the first time, as well as “exceeding an annualized revenue run rate of more than $100M” in its fourth quarter.

It’s certainly a milestone for the Los Angeles-based start-up, which competes with a little company called Google. OpenX has raised almost $51 million in funding since 2007, the latest round being $20 million last year.

CEO Tim Cadogan — a former Yahoo ad exec who arrived at OpenX in 2008 — talked about all this, and about where the online display market online is headed, in a video interview with me last week.

Here’s the chat, and the official press release from OpenX, too:

[ See post to watch video ]

OPENX ANNOUNCES FIRST FULL QUARTER OF PROFITABILITY

Leading provider of digital advertising technology achieves annual run rate exceeding $100M

LOS ANGELES, February 13, 2012 – OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), one of the world’s leading providers of digital advertising technology, today announced it achieved a profitable fourth quarter as well as exceeding an annualized revenue run rate of more than $100M. The company also announced that it expects to continue its record of profitability during 2012 with continued robust growth across all areas of the company’s business.

2011 was a year of extraordinary success for OpenX during which the company served more than one trillion ad impressions and now handles more than 200 billion ad transactions per month. OpenX Market, the company’s unique ad exchange platform, saw a particularly strong year-over-year rate of growth of nearly 700%. This massive growth in OpenX Market is due to a growing number of publishers and advertisers recognizing the precision and strength of ad exchanges with the quality of both buy-side and sell-side customers that OpenX attracts. The company also continues to operate and manage key global partnerships, including OpenX Market Japan, a partnership with cyber communications inc. (“cci”), a subsidiary of Dentsu Inc.

The company’s advertising technology services, which include OpenX Enterprise, achieved a Q4 year-over-year growth rate of 100% compared with the same period in 2010, due to the acceleration of OpenX Enterprise, the company’s Software as a Service ad serving platform. OpenX has made significant progress over the last year in terms of both product adoption and revenue, proving its paradigm-shifting revenue serving capabilities are not only capable of driving revenue for publishers but can also do so at scale.

“2011 was a breakthrough year for OpenX with huge growth in global adoption of OpenX Enterprise and the phenomenal expansion of OpenX Market,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “Providing a comprehensive revenue serving solution for publishers to make them more money is the heart of what we are building and we are clearly demonstrating that we are able to do this at massive, global scale. The quality of the OpenX team and the growth levels we’re seeing put us in an incredibly strong position for 2012.”

With the launch in early 2011 of OpenX Enterprise, the Company offered the online advertising market the first true total revenue serving platform to make publishers more money. Since OpenX Enterprise combines an ad server with an ad exchange, it enables publishers to manage exclusive, guaranteed, non-guaranteed and real-time revenue sources all in one unified platform. As a result, for the first time publishers can maximize yield across all their ad revenue channels in real-time in one place.

Adoption of OpenX by major publishers, advertisers and partners has grown rapidly and is now used by thousands of customers across the world, including Groupon, cci, TheStreet.com, Turn, Invite Media, MediaMath, and [x+1].

“Reaching profitability is an important milestone in OpenX’s story,” said Rick Gombos, chief financial officer, OpenX. “What’s even more important is that we have achieved profitability by any measure of financial performance — EBITDA, cash flow and net income.”

OpenX Closes $10 Million Round

John Paczkowski — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:30:28 +0000

It didn’t really need the money, but OpenX today announced a $10 million third round of funding. DAG Ventures led the round, and existing investors Mangrove Capital, Accel Partners, Index Ventures, First Round Capital and former AOL CEO Jon Miller, the company’s chairman, all chipped in a second time.

To date, the company–which makes the leading open-source ad serving software, catering to about 30,000 Web publishers on 100,000 Web sites–has raised $30.8 million. “We raised $15.5 million at the end of 2007 and still had a chunk of that left, so we didn’t have to raise money,” OpenX CEO (and former Yahoo Senior VP) Tim Cadogan told The Deal. “But if it’s generally true that it makes sense to raise money when you don’t need it, in this environment, it is triply true.”

Quadruply true when you’re competing with the likes of Google’s (GOOG) Double Click and Yahoo’s (YHOO) Right Media, which dominate the Internet advertising market in which OpenX plays.

Former Yahoo Exec to OpenX; OpenX to L.A.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:55:18 +0000

Former Yahoo Senior Vice President Tim Cadogan will take the CEO job at OpenX, the popular open-source ad server start-up, backed by Index Ventures, Accel Partners and others.

As part of the change, the company will move from its London HQ to Los Angeles. OpenX has about 30 employees, including 10 developers in Poland, but not all will be moving West.

Cadogan was with Yahoo (YHOO) for five years, in its search unit and later as SVP for ad products, including playing an important role in the launch of its Panama ad search product. Previously, he was an early member of the GoTo.com team and went to Yahoo just before it acquired Overture.

Cadogan will now run OpenX (which recently changed its name from OpenAds), which makes the leading open-source ad serving software, catering to about 30,000 Web publishers on 100,000 Web sites in more than 100 countries.

Until now, OpenX has been helmed by James Bilefield, another former Yahoo exec, who was also VP of Global Business Development and GM of European operations for Skype.

OpenX has raised about $21 million in funding since 2007. Besides Index and Accel, other investors include First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Former AOL head Jon Miller also recently joined its board as chairman.

“With open-source software, there is a lot of potential for business disruption and to open up the market,” said Cadogan in an interview with BoomTown from London. “You have not really seen open-source models really applied to the ad space until now…but there is a big business in giving publishers a really robust offering and a platform where they can also share what they build.”