Private companies get to be selective about the numbers they share with the public — on the ad-tech side, you usually end up with vague announcements about percentage growth, run rates and so on. OpenX, however, is releasing numbers that are a little more concrete.
Specifically, it says it saw $140 million in net revenue (basically, revenue after ad payments have been distributed to publishers) in 2015, up 40 percent year-over-year. The company isn’t disclosing the size of its profits, but it does say that it’s profitable, and that its profits have tripled over the past two years.
“As our core business continues to scale profitably, we are using our strong financial and market position to invest aggressively in innovative high-growth areas like video and new buying models; in the next generation of our No. 1 ranked quality control platform for ad quality and traffic quality; in customer development and service for all our clients globally and most fundamentally, in our people,” said CEO Tim Cadogan in a statement.
Founded in 2008, OpenX offers programmatic ad tools for online publishers. Its investors include Accel Partners, Index Ventures and AOL Ventures. (AOL owns TechCrunch.)
When the company hired CFO Tom Fuelling two years ago, I asked Cadogan whether he was planning to go public — he said he didn’t want to “put the cart in front the horse,” but he also acknowledged that companies like OpenX usually look to the public markets eventually. (Update: According to his LinkedIn profile, Fuelling departed OpenX last month.) Recently, however, those markets haven’t been terribly enthusiastic about ad-tech stocks.