US ad tech company Quantcast has entered into the Nordic market with the acquisition of Ad Performance, continuing its foray into Europe.
The Swedish-based outfit, which specialises in performance and audience based advertising, was acquired by Quantcast for an undisclosed fee.
Ad Performance co-founder and CEO Anders Uhlin will be heading up the new Stockholm office as Nordics managing director, where he will oversee the transfer of his entire former team and client-base.
The acquisition puts Quantcast in position to ride the surge of programmatic advertising in Sweden, where the number of publishers offering up their inventory via this channel nearly doubled between 2013 and 2014, commented Uhlin.
“Last year 66% of publishers in Sweden made their inventory available for programmatic trading. To truly maximise the programmatic opportunity, data must be the backbone to any digital advertising strategy”.
Uhlin added that “no other company” offered such an intuitive solution and spoke of his pride in leading the company’s Nordic expansion.
Aggressive EMEA growth
The acquisition follows a number of other strategic maneuvers by the company in the EMEA region, with the opening of a new office in Milan also announced today, where Ilaria Zampori has been appointed to the role of general manager, Italy.
Last month also saw the group open up a new office in Manchester, considered by some as the UK’s next digital hub.
European managing director at Quantcast Phil Macauley spoke on the strength of the digital advertising market in EMEA, worth a record €30.7 billion last year, and his confidence in the company’s rapid investment within the region:
“The acquisition of Ad Performance and our expansion into Italy bring our proven technology and proprietary data to advertisers, agencies and publishers in these markets for the first time.”