Strossle brings deep expertise on contextual advertising through continued close collaboration with publishers
Amsterdam, 7th July 2021 – Azerion, the fast-growing digital gaming and monetisation technology company, today announces the acquisition of Strossle International AB (“Strossle”), the Stockholm-based media tech company. This acquisition is designed to further strengthen Azerions position in the Nordics and Central and Eastern European countries (CEE). This development follows the acquisitions of Swedish programmatic advertising company Delta Projects and German gaming veteran WHOW Games over the past two weeks. Both transactions were funded using the proceeds of Azerion’s successful 200-million euro bond issuance completed on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange in April this year. These deals support Azerion’s ambition to become a major gaming and monetisation platform in Europe. Besides, the company continues to develop and execute its funding strategy by exploring further capital markets options, including a potential IPO in the not-too-distant future, to fuel growth, expand its platform and to ultimately realise its vision.
Commenting on the acquisition, Patrik Fagerlund VP Nordics at Azerion, said: “Strossle’s award winning contextual and native advertising platform, is expected to expand Azerion’s portfolio and support our clients in the Nordic markets and CEE countries. We see Strossle as an strategic acquisition in a cookieless world where web tracking is increasingly relying on consent. Services like content recommendation and native solutions allow advertisers to reach their audiences without involving user data and contextual advertising is rapidly gaining traction. Together we can create more value for advertisers and develop services and tools that respect users’ right to digital privacy.”
“Azerion is the perfect match for Strossle”, says Strossle CEO Håkon Tillier. “As part of Azerion, we can take the business to the next level and grow our presence into larger European markets. Within the Azerion group, there are many opportunities to develop adtech and a fast growing native programmatic space, thanks to the company’s culture of performance and cross country collaboration.This is a very exciting day for European publishers and advertisers alike. I’m so proud of the Strossle team who have been critical in creating the amazing company we have today, and I can’t wait for the next chapter of our journey in partnership with Azerion.”
Strossle and native advertising
Strossle is a leading content discovery platform in Northern Europe. Through partnerships with more than 350 publishers in eight European markets, Strossle estimates it is part of the reading experience on 500,000,000 articles per month. As a leading player in the field of contextual advertising, Strossle is the distribution platform of choice for hundreds of advertisers across Europe, and Strossle’s native ads have generated millions in revenue for its media partners since operations began in 2014. In 2018 Strossle was announced as winner of the EMEA fast 500 award by Deloitte and has launched services such as self-service marketplace for advertisers, API integrations and house-ads solutions for publishers with their own content marketing studios.
“Native” ads are commercial messages that are designed to blend seamlessly into the reader experience of an online news site or magazine. The European market was estimated to be €16.8 billion in 2020 and is expected to increase to more than €77.5 billion by 2025. With increased focus on reader privacy and the forthcoming deprecation of cookies and third party data. Advertisers are increasingly seeking out privacy safe, non-intrusive advertising formats. Strossle services like the content recommendation and native solutions play into this trend because they allow their advertisers to reach their audiences without involving user data.
About Azerion
Azerion is a fast-growing and leading pan-European digital entertainment and media platform. Our integrated platform provides technology solutions to automate the purchase and sale of digital advertising for media buyers and sellers. Content creators, publishers and advertisers work with us to reach millions of people across the globe that play our games and use our entertainment concepts to increase engagement, loyalty and drive e-commerce. Founded in 2014 by two Dutch entrepreneurs, Azerion has experienced rapid expansion thanks to organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Azerion is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.