Overview

All sectors and businesses are undergoing digital transformation, and media and advertising are no exception. 

Advertising technology, or just “adtech,” is a collection of software programs and tools publishers and advertisers may use to optimize their ad campaigns, increase income from ad inventory, and improve ad targeting.

Businesses in the AdTech and Media industries are transitioning from conventional operating approaches and concentrating on how innovative IT solutions may optimize their operations, incorporating different perspectives into research and development.

According to Verified Market Research, the global Ad Tech software market was valued at $16.3 billion in 2018 and is anticipated to reach about $30 billion by 2026.

Although the advertising technology business has been expanding for over ten years, the status of the global economy has a significant influence on it.

The volatile economy has posed significant challenges for the AdTech industry. With just a few months before the end of 2024, U.S. AdTech startups have raised only around $360 million, putting the sector on track for its slowest year in over a decade. Contributing factors include market saturation, increased regulatory pressures like GDPR and CCPA, and broader economic uncertainties. Despite these challenges, the advertising technology industry has historically proven remarkably resilient. Mature companies like Creative Fabrica continue to perform well, and future innovations, particularly in AI, may drive a rebound.

Domain Names and Naming Highlights

Based on our analysis of the companies listed in our Top Media & AdTech companies list, we have identified the following key highlights in naming and domain name usage.

Domain Names

The majority of the companies, 256 out of 302, operate on the .com, outperforming all other extensions on the list.

9 companies operate on .tv. .tv is the extension for the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. It has become popular as it is used as an abbreviation of “television”.

8 companies have secured a .io domain name. .io is a common choice among tech startups, despite scandals about who, in fact, benefits from the sales of .io domains.

Exact Brand Match (EBM) .com domains have been the preferred choice of 232 entries. EBM domains simplify the process for customers to find, engage with, and remember the company, potentially leading to increased interaction and higher conversion rates. 

2 companies use a dash in their domain name. One of the downsides of using a hyphen in a domain name is that adding it to your domain name makes it harder to reach when typing.

Naming

Descriptive Names: Many companies choose names that convey their business focus, such as AdMarketplace, MediaMath, and Integral Ad Science.

Use of Technology-Related Terms: Companies like TechTarget, DataXu, Adform, Criteo, AppNexus, Marin Software, and LiveRamp highlight their technological expertise by integrating tech-related terms into their brand names. This naming strategy reflects their focus on data-driven solutions, optimization, and advanced technology in the AdTech industry, signalling a strong commitment to innovation and staying at the forefront of cutting-edge approaches.

Short and Memorable: Companies like Braze, Suzy, and Keap use concise, catchy names that are easy to remember and pronounce, making them accessible and memorable to a broad audience.

Creative and Abstract Names: Some companies opt for more abstract or creative names like ZetaGlobal and Stensul, which help them stand out with unique brand identities.

Innovative: Using inventive, unique names like Innovid and Smartly.io signals the brand’s commitment to pushing boundaries and embracing new ideas.

Namepicks

Creative Fabrica 

Creative Fabrica, launched in 2016, is a marketplace offering a wide range of digital assets, tools, and classes for creative projects like fonts, embroidery designs, and quilting. It operates both as a marketplace for individual purchases and a subscription service, which drives most of its revenue. The company has raised nearly $70 million and serves a community of 4 million creators, with a significant portion of its business coming from the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia. 

Over the past year we have grown from roughly 35 to 90 employees. In the coming year we focus on senior hires to support the growth of the organisation. The fresh cash might also give the company options for possible future acquisitions “when opportunities arise”.

Roemie Hillenaar, the startup’s CEO for sifted.eu

The funding success of Creative Fabrica is evidence that investors remain interested in startups that encourage creativity and art in spite of the market downturn.

Creative Fabrica operates on the EBM domain CreativeFabrica.com. This ensures their brand is well protected online, avoids traffic and email leaks as well as confusion amongst their customers and business partners.

Moloco

Moloco is a programmatic advertising platform that offers machine learning and growth solutions for mobile app marketers and e-commerce companies. The company was founded in 2013 by Ahn Ikk-jin. Ahn dropped out of his doctorate programme in 2008, after his professor told him it will take 10 years to get his PhD. He went on working for Google for 5 years before starting his own company. In 2021, Moloco turned unicorn after Tiger Global funding, becoming one of the very few US unicorns created by South Korean founders.

The naming story behind Moloco is rather funny, here it is shared by the founder.

I inadvertently named my company “milk” in Russian. I learned this while speaking to an investor who asked, “why milk?” The lesson here is to research your product’s name in all languages. Moloco is actually a derivative of Machine Learning Company.

Ahn Ikk-jin, Founder CEO, Moloco

Moloco has secured Moloco.com for its brand presence online. An exact brand match .com name like Moloco.com is the natural choice of most internet users, making their marketing most effective across all channels.

SmartOcto

SmartOcto develops B2B technology to optimize content strategy using big data. The company was formed by merging two European startups: Serbian Content Insights and Dutch SmartOcto. Rutger Verhoeven and Erik van Heeswijk, the company’s co-founders, met when employed at the Dutch public broadcaster. When they worked for this media, they had an idea for a system that would make it easier for newsrooms to deal with the flood of information. They discussed what features such a platform must have and developed the concept for SmartOcto. Dragutin Miletic, Ilija Susa, and Dejan Nikolic had a similar idea across Europe with a company called ContentInsights focused on historical analyses. The two companies, SmartOcto and Content Insights merged in the spring of 2020 to form SmartOcto.

Thanks to their differences, the two companies were able to complement each other well and combine their technologies on one platform, creating the most elaborate data analysis system.

We wanted to build the tool we wished we’d have had when we were editors” says Erik. And that’s the sum of it, really. All those hours in newsrooms, on the commute, in conversation with the best and brightest, have led us here. This is really just the prologue. We’re hoping you’ll be part of the rest of the adventure.

SmartOcto team

SmartOcto operates on SmartOcto.com – an exact brand match .com domain.

Frontify

Frontify is a brand management SaaS B2B platform. In 2013, Roger Dudler founded Frontify. He worked alone on it for two years, then hired an experienced CEO to oversee the company’s early growth until he was ready to assume the post himself in 2019. Roger saw Frontify’s direction as quite clear- “be viewed as the brand for brands,.” To accomplish this, he realized he had to get the entire team on board with the brand, empowering individuals at every level to play a part in the overall brand management process.

This gives people the feeling they are really contributing from the ground floor and a part of something that matters..Ultimately, deeper analytics that reflect the way users are working with the brand will allow for better decision making and governance for ultimate engagement and expression.

Roger Dudler, Founder & CEO at Frontify

The significance of the brand is reflected in its name, “Frontify”, positioning the brand at the “Front” of everything the company does:

Frontify has invested in the exact brand match domain name Frontify.com, which clearly matches their worldwide goals and expresses their vision.

Prizeout

Founded in 2019, Prizeout is a marketplace for digital gift cards. The company works with brands that want to expand and offers gift cards on their behalf to increase sales. 

Operating as a digital cashout marketplace, Prizeout connects brands that are looking to acquire and retain customers with platforms that have users who are looking to withdraw funds. 

David Metz, Founder and CEO of Prizeout for superbcrew.com

In July, Prizeout announced the launch of their partnership with FlyCoin, a first-of-its-kind crypto-based rewards platform. Users of Flycoin can now use Prizeout to convert their FLY into digital offers for their preferred local and national brands.

Prizeout.com is the domain name this startup has chosen to operate on. Creating new business names by combining two words is an effective way to stand out from the competition. Many successful businesses, like Microsoft and Facebook, have names made up of a smart combination of two words.

Adverty

Adverty is an in-game advertising platform. Using their unique BrainImpression technology, they calculate the ideal ad placements for optimal viewability for in-game advertising. Niklas Bakos founded Adverty in 2016. The company named industry veteran Jonas Söderqvist as its new CEO in April. Jonas will unite the team around a new vision, allowing Adverty to build on previous successes and prepare for the rise of interest in in-game ad executions. He aims to encourage brands to be more innovative to reach vast global consumers.

Advertisers and brands have not yet grasped the full potential of the available inventory. The appetite is there, but so is some fear around shifting budget from traditional channels. This is a mistake, given the enormous power of in-game advertising. That power is the reason some of our clients have now run more than 15 campaigns with us. Their results justify their confidence.

Jonas Söderqvist, CEO of Adverty for pocketgamer.biz

Adverty recently partnered with Verizon to keep growing into new ad formats. 

Adverty has secured an EBM domain name for their brand – Adverty.com. Adding letters to the beginning or end of an existing word is another creative way to come up with a unique and catchy brand name.

While we make every effort to ensure the data on our site is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee its reliability. Our data is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or other advice. We strongly recommend that you independently verify any information before relying on it.

How does your brand name match your company vision? What new horizons can a better name open? Get in touch if you feel your brand deserves a better name, we are always happy to help.

Other resources

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