I met the CEO of London-based adtech company Adludio at Cannes in 2023 on a shared yacht. It was lovely, and things seemed promising, with the US poised to be a key market for them.
However, late last month, Adludio went into “administration,” meaning it no longer has enough money to meet its obligations and must shutter/restructure. As a result, all employees have been let go and are now seeking new jobs (the LinkedIn account for Adludio is actively promoting these employees to support their job hunt).
Hat tip to Marketecture for breaking the news in adtech circles about the company’s closure. You can find limited but more financial details here.
Why This Matters:
Despite its name, Adludio is not an audio adtech company (after a few drinks in Cannes, I think I referred to them this way to the CEO). Instead, it specializes in mobile dynamic creative optimization (DCO), powered by AI. According to a 2022 press release, “Using Adludio’s platform, clients can input a desired KPI for their mobile campaign, whether it be building brand awareness or driving sales, and they will be presented with a creative that has been deterministically designed to achieve that outcome.”
Last year, the company raised $2.5 million—a surprisingly small round given its AI-centric tech and messaging, especially during the height of the AI craze. The goal was to expand in the US and lean on attention-based measurement as a metric to support its tech.
“The company has produced mobile ads for Ford, Land Rover Jaguar, Estée Lauder, Nike, Adidas, and Microsoft,” reads the VentureBeat story on its funding. “Now it hopes to help more marketers win the battle for brand attention. Currently sharing its expertise and technology with the IAB to develop this field, Adludio is redefining attention as a metric for success.” (Adelaide is like “huh?”)
The administration seems to have come as a surprise, as the company was actively marketing and promoting its offerings just a week ago.
Experts React:
An Adludio employee, who claims to be a full stack developer, said this on Glassdoor about the company in May of this year:
“Mismanagement on a daily basis. There was no direction whatsoever, unprompted redundancies, we were forced to lie to some people from within the team, sell smoke to investors and it was overall toxic.”
Yeesh. The CEO I met in 2023 at Cannes was replaced about a month later by an interim leader. Clearly, there were some challenges at the company.
Check out a list of employees from Adludio looking for their next role here.
Our Take:
This is a horrible outcome for Adludio, of course, and we wish all of their employees well.
If there is a takeaway to be discerned here, it is that AI-powered adtech has not stood out in the market, and adtech companies face challenges in selling AI capabilities that “feel” unique. This brings us back to the Crunchbase data we covered recently, which revealed that adtech funding had dried up this year.
