Brands
RTB House opens AI Marketing Lab for advertisers
MUMBAI: RTB House, a global company providing retargeting technology with top online advertisers has opened a new research division called AI Marketing Lab. The lab will research and develop cutting edge mar-tech solutions for both publishers and advertisers.
The lab will conduct research and development in broad marketing areas and support all the international markets including new markets like India and US. Present in across 70 countries, RTB House opened its first office in India in September 2017. The new lab will remain separate from the main R&D department and focus on creating an environment for inventing and developing new mar-tech solutions across digital advertising formats including programmatic ads.
“We’ve been highly focused on improving our primary personalised-retargeting system which is a benchmark in the digital marketing industry globally. We’re now looking to the future, to expand our knowledge, technology, and resources to new areas in order to develop another game-changing solution. One of the most promising areas is improving effectiveness of acquiring new traffic by advertisers,” says RTB House CEO Robert Dyczkowski.
“In 2017, we achieved one of our biggest goals and introduced deep learning technology into 100 per cent of the crucial elements of our predicting mechanism including for brands and advertisers in India which was a market first. The Indian market has been slow but is rapidly seeing an adoption in new age advertising technologies like programmatic ads. With this lab we aim to pioneer industry first innovations for advertisers in India using artificial intelligence,” adds RTB House India Country Manager Kshitiz Randhir Shori.
RTB House has also earmarked $5 million for establishing the lab and the amount will also be used for hiring researchers and engineers with expertise in deep learning.
The opening of the new lab also comes close on the heels of expanding to the US market with offices in New York, Boston and Chicago. It currently has more than 1200 clients in nearly 70 countries, including such well-known brands as Adidas, Hotels.com, New Balance, Trivago, Sephora and Walmart.com. The focus in the US market will remain on acquiring new clients and bolstering employee strength.
As per a report on digital advertising by Dentsu Aegis Network, the Indian digital advertising industry is currently pegged at around Rs 8,202 crore and is expected to grow at 32 per cent CAGR to reach Rs 18,986 crore by 2020. Increasing penetration of digital media by the Indian audience will play a key role for advertisers to reach out to untapped audiences. The AI lab will seek to develop and implement new age solutions for an emerging market like India. With programmatic ads increasingly becoming popular by advertisers, AI lab will play an important role in assisting brands to improve their ROIs on digital spends and reduce ad fraud.
RTB House is the first and only ad retargeting company to be powered entirely by deep-learning algorithms. Deep learning models high-level abstractions in data, and imitates the human cognition in processing data rapidly to create patterns that marketers use in decision-making while allocating ad-spends.
Brands
UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
