SINGAPORE — Opera Mediaworks today announced its new company name will be AdColony with the goal of unifying the brand, performance, and publishing business under a single name while continuing its commitment to quality mobile advertising experiences that deliver outcomes fueled by creativity and data science-driven automation and Artificial Intelligence.
The name change will become effective starting in January 2017, and the company will continue to stay independent, with the corporate entity listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under Opera ASA.
“I am excited to unify the advertising business under the AdColony brand globally,” said CEO Will Kassoy. “We are passionate about brand experiences that evoke emotion and drive real outcomes by combining both creativity with the next generation of advertising technologies like data science-driven automation and Artificial Intelligence. We look forward to building the AdColony brand around this positioning and hope to help elevate the state of mobile advertising.”
AdColony is the mobile video ad platform that the parent company Opera ASA acquired in 2014. After the acquisition, AdColony remained an integral part of, and a major revenue driver for the Opera Mediaworks business. It felt natural to turn to that established name and to continue the momentum and reputation the brand already had in the mobile ecosystem.
As such, this rebrand will not bring any changes to the company’s customers and partners, and they will simply continue to receive the very best mobile advertising products and services from us. Although the former AdColony business was mainly associated with mobile video advertising, the new AdColony in 2017 will encompass all areas of the former Opera Mediaworks and AdColony business, including rich media/display, streaming video, Instant-Play™ video, and all associated technologies and ad formats across our programmatic marketplace.
The reason for the change is the recent acquisition of Opera ASA’s namesake consumer browser by a Chinese consortium of companies. As part of the deal, acquirers are retaining the “Opera” name and brand, which required a shift away from the name “Opera Mediaworks,” which is a fully-owned subsidiary of Opera ASA.
“This rebrand is an opportunity for us to define who we are, what we do and what role we play in the industry. AdColony’s strong positioning around best-in-class mobile and video technology will elevate our presence and relevance already strong position in the mobile advertising industry,” said Managing Director for Asia, Vikas Gulati.
“We continue to expand our reach in this region, invest in building dynamic, local market teams and by constantly innovating, using the latest technology and offering the highest quality advertising experiences to deliver even better results for brands, agencies, and publisher partners,” he added.
Second-largest SDK footprint globally
The company will continue to leverage its deep software development kit (SDK) footprint among the world’s best mobile app publishers, second only to Google in the top 1000 apps globally. These popular apps, which AdColony is lauding as “Today’s Primetime” include fast-risers in the charts from publishers such as Shazam, NHN Entertainment, Bitmango, Line, and many other next-generation media companies. Mobile users are spending about 46 minutes each day in each of these popular apps, with an average session length of over 9.6 minutes, and in other metrics such as session time they often exceed the norm for mobile app use.
Outcomes driven by mobile creativity
AdColony’s market-leading technology unlocks mobile creativity to drive results for brands and publishers. With a dedication to purpose-built, high-performing mobile creative formats, AdColony has been a leader in innovating new, immersive design to leverage the native hardware of mobile devices. The company will be launching new creative formats across video and rich media in 2017 to drive levels of creativity that aren’t possible on other platforms. The company garnered more than 40 awards for its creative work across the globe in 2016 alone.
Data Science and AI: key initiatives for 2017
The strong SDK footprint also allows AdColony to have access to stronger data signals than other players for better data and targeting, resulting in optimal outcomes for customers. AdColony continues to invest in data science and machine learning, and one of the key initiatives for the company in 2016 has been to unify all of the mobile advertising technology platforms that have been acquired over the years into one powerful and integrated platform.
Over the past several months, the company has invested in state-of-the-art technology and data scientists to work on this unified platform, called Apollo, which will be launched in various phases throughout 2017.
The company plans to launch a new, refreshed website in 2017 which will reflect the new, unified offerings of the global mobile ad platform and the combined businesses as part of the corporate rebranding.
